


Rey and Kylo Ren: The Love Story

by Siara_Brandt



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bad Parent Han Solo, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-02-11 23:02:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12945933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siara_Brandt/pseuds/Siara_Brandt
Summary: AUish: Rey and Kylo Ren. Bitter enemies separated by a chasm of darkness hatred and mistrust. Against the blazing backdrop of brutal war, the ultimate battle will be waged in the consuming storm of their passion.Discontinued





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZigguratRolsovitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZigguratRolsovitch/gifts).



It was a rare hushed and haunted moment. A pause in the chaos that the outside world could cause. He had come seeking a cooling breath of air. He had come in search of a moment of solitude, something that was almost impossible for him to find. It would not take them long to find him when they realized that he was missing, so he coveted every solitary moment and every single breath of silence.

The rain had stopped. The wind had died until it was but a sigh through the leaves. He took the mask off now and the wind lifted the dark hair from his collar and blew a vagrant strand across his cheek.

He had prowled the woods like a lost soul in the rain-swept darkness. The world around him was very still now, very peaceful. Everything was glistening with magic for the leaves were heavy and drenched with moisture. But there was no peace in him. Not in his mind or in his spirit.

He was tall and powerfully built, disciplined both in mind and body. There was a smooth, predatory grace about his every movement. He was like a restless panther pacing the length of its cage, seeking an escape that did not exist.

The black cape was hanging negligently down his broad back, baring powerful, rain-damp shoulders as he took several more long strides then stood poised on the highest promontory of rocks, looking down like a watchful bird of prey with immense folded wings. In the drab moonlight, he exuded an air of mystery, of darkness, of menace.

The fathomless depths of black eyes reflected the red moon just now rising over the horizon. The muscles flexed on one side of his taut jaw. One black-gloved hand closed slowly into a tight fist as it matched the dark flow of his thoughts.

He fought the remembering, but the memories came relentlessly, inexorably, like some black and shadowy entity that came winging its way through the darkness to take up residence in his heart, wholly against his will. It had begun on a night like this one.  _He_  had begun. He re-lived it all in an unguarded, unwary moment. He re-lived how he had been violently wrenched from the peaceful life he had known. How he had been stricken, desperate, determined to survive in spite of it all. Vowing to himself even at so young an age that he would escape and return home. But years passed, an eternity it had seemed to him, and he had not been able to escape, although it had not been for lack of trying.

As he gazed out over the desolate landscape with its scattering of gnarled, distorted trees, there was no change in his expression, save, perhaps, for a deepening of the cold, steady gleam in his eyes. The person he had once been was long dead. Had anyone mourned him? He did not know. His new life had risen out of an awareness, a determination that had gathered substance from the very shadows that had become his existence. While the darkness had become his enemy, he had also been sheltered in a twisted kind of way by the same wings of darkness that had surrounded him. At that time, he had not yet realized that the more subtle forms of brutality could be the cruelest, nor that refuges could also become prisons.

In the long, grueling years that followed, he was forged in the blazing heat of immured, ruthless existence. Evil, in all its diabolical cleverness, seemed to know the incantations into his very soul. It seemed to have the uncanny ability to know best how to wear him down. Life became a daily struggle for survival, a struggle that rose out of the more violent things that filled his soul, like hate, anger and fear. In the consuming fire, those things eventually melded into a very grim and hardened way of life. A cooler existence. As his old self died, he had grown quickly to cold, hard manhood. It had been the only way to survive. There is no changing true evil. But one can build walls against it. One can adapt. When the ashes had finally settled, he rose up out of the grayness, learning to keep impenetrable walls around his heart, his mind, his very existence. Brutality had been the medium he had been raised in. It never left him, so it had carved deep scars, both inside and out.

He lifted his face to the black void above him. There was a fleeting shadow of emotion in his eyes, but it vanished almost as quickly as it had come. Night was like a dream, a place to get lost in. This night was deep, deeper than most, and he had a strange sensation, an unfamiliar one, that he was a part of the vast order of things. He could not explain it, even to himself. He was struggling tonight with so many uncomfortable feelings, suppressed anger the most volatile one of them all, perhaps. And disappointment, frustration, disbelief even. They had used his anger against him many times in the past, so he had to guard against that now-obvious snare. He also had to guard against getting caught in the trap of their lies again. He made a solemn vow to himself that he would not get caught again.

He closed his eyes for a moment, pressed by the heavy weight of the past, a past that should be long dead and buried by now. Tonight, for no accountable reason, that past came back to him like a ghost, haunting him, rattling its chains to get his attention. It was hard to say why some memories were so tenacious. Why some things lingered and why some things were forgotten. They certainly didn't stay because he wished them to. He had tried to exorcise them away for many years.

Was he even a man yet? Or was he only what they had made him? He had no answer.

His lips twisted into a cold sneer. They should have worked harder to wipe out his memories. But then, it was entirely possible that it was just one more of their diabolical ways of tormenting him. Maybe taking his past away completely would have made things too easy for him. Then again, maybe they wanted him to stay angry because they could control him more easily.

The past could still hold him prisoner against his will. It drew him now, at this time. He was called back through the years for a moment, even as he damned his weakness. Just when he thought that such things had grown numb inside him, something tugged at old strings and he felt half-dead sentiments stirred to life again. As if something dared him to go back and dig in the debris to find the substance of his former self.

He released a sudden, self-contemptuous breath. What was the sense in going over it all again? He had been set adrift at a very young age, abandoned by both parents. There was no changing that. And because of their abandonment, he had been left vulnerable. He had been used and exploited. Because of their choice, he did not know what a normal life was supposed to be like. His childhood had been stolen, his innocence lost. For a long time, he had waited for someone to come rescue him. But no one ever came. And the pain and the loneliness gradually changed to bitterness and cynicism.

In the end, he could only bow his head and yield to the loss, and the things he had to live with and without. There was the reality of bitter loneliness and unspeakable horrors in the universe around him. He was not unique in experiencing those things, and there was no sense in mourning what you couldn't change. Long ago he had accepted that life was full of agony. There were holes in his heart. Very ragged holes. He had tried patching them up as best he could, but on nights like this he could still feel the scars. He wished with everything in him that he  _could_ forget. Everything that he ever was. Everything that he had ever felt.

His new masters told him he was lucky to be alive. His kidnapping should have been a death sentence and it had spelled death for many others. But living could also be a kind of death. He had learned that, too. He had been all but shattered by the things that had happened, by the things that he had seen. He had come down a path that could have led to madness, so traumatic were the horrors he had witnessed.

He closed those thoughts off by sheer force of will. He refused to dwell long upon it. He refused to let it weaken him. Mostly he had come to terms with those horrors, but there were times when, at the edges, he could feel the depression, like a reality that couldn't be undone. He connected again with that sickness of soul that had almost destroyed him in the beginning, in the worst of those years. It loomed over everything, like a shadow that darkens all, surprising him in moments like this when he realized there was still such despair inside.

They had stolen his life from him and replaced it with obedience. They had demanded every drop of blood from him, until his only escape was to close his eyes and accept fate. Until he learned to shut down what remained of the vulnerable child he had once been. Unfortunately, that included shutting down everything that had made him human.

He could not have his old life back. He was forced to accept that. So to fill the gaping void, he had let them teach him, turning his pain and his rage into the skills of war and military training. He had thrown himself feverishly into those things. He had learned quickly. One did not exist in a society of ruthless repression and unspeakable brutality by being meek or passive in nature. One could not be forced to do the things he had been forced to do and not be changed deep inside. But that was all by design, he knew. It was calculated to steep him in darkness, to try and make him what they were.

In some ways they had won. Except for times like these. When he felt lost. When he struggled. When his internal, wildly chaotic thoughts threatened, rose up against him and the pain of the past became like some devouring dragon while his aloneness pressed down upon him in suffocating, engulfing waves.

And yet he was impatient with it all. He knew he could not live his life like that. Some survival instinct kept him going in spite of it all.

He bowed his head. "I must get control of this," he whispered in the empty darkness. "Let me resolve the past at last, so I can burn it to ashes for good."

His chest rose and fell in a deep sigh. They had plans for him. Of course they did. The harder he had fought, the harder they had beaten him down. But they also feared him. He felt that from them. They were never quite sure of him. Like a lion tamer can never be sure when a captive beast might turn on him and tear him to pieces. On the surface he was tamed. But underneath, that was anyone's guess.

While he had been willful, almost intractable in his younger years, he was too important to their plans. Yet keeping him alive was also dangerous, so they were relentless in their efforts to control his every move, his every thought, his every breath. Those years were like moving through a fog. He could not see very far ahead of him, but he fought his way through the darkness nevertheless. And always Snoke was there.

Snoke was suspicious by nature. He trusted no one. He would have destroyed him in a moment and without a single regret if he thought that it would best serve his interests. If he thought that he was a threat.

Ultimate control and self-preservation were Snoke's two driving goals. Therefore, destroying the Rebellion was an obsession with him. It was his first priority. No matter how it had to be accomplished. No matter how much collateral damage might be inflicted. No matter how many lives had to be destroyed.

And that was precisely what he had been trained for. To crush the Rebellion.

As he stood there alone in the darkness, his eyes grew hard. How had things gone so far? he wondered. How had he lost so much? How had he drifted so far from what he used to know? Used to  _be_?

"You think you have kept me from being what I  _am_ ," he whispered savagely to the dark void. "But there also have I defied you."

They had worked hard to harness the power he possessed. But he had been rash and he had been reckless and there had been a point when they had considered destroying him because he had been so rebellious, so difficult, so unpredictable. Of course they didn't know that he was aware of that. That's when he had discovered that they could not read all his thoughts. That's when he discovered that a man's mind could be read, but not his heart.

They had probed to the farthest edges of his will, but he had grown strong enough to keep a shield around his deepest thoughts. It was a shield that they could not penetrate. One they did not know existed. It was his one victory.

On the surface he was submissive. He was passive. Tamed. They didn't know that traces of rebellion still seethed in the deepest regions of his heart. Against his captivity. Against them. Against what they had made him.

As he grew in strength, they controlled what they could. Along with the discipline and the forced loyalty, they had tried to instill ruthlessness in him. But as long as a man was capable of thinking for himself, he could always become a threat. They knew this, so they were always wary of him. Especially that unsettled part of him, that recklessness that they knew had the potential to flare into something out of control. That recklessness that remained in spite of everything they had done to purge him of it.

In the end he was left with this struggle to find the undefinable piece that was missing in his life, the elusive thing that could fill the aching, lonely void that still remained. It was a hunger that he himself had never been able to vanquish. No matter how hard he had tried.

He did not understand exactly what he hungered for. He only knew that it was a pervasive, deeply-rooted hunger at his core. One that remained maddeningly beyond his reach. He could not even put a name to it. It was a weakness, perhaps. A vulnerability. Something left over from his earliest years. He could not let it distract him, but he knew it was what had made him seek out the solitude and come up here alone tonight. It writhed inside him like a living entity, one that would not be denied or quieted.

He stared at the ebony sky above him with its two moons and the foreign pattern of stars. He shouldn't even be here. This was not his world. He fell prey to an unexpected twinge of homesickness, found it astounding that he could be capable of such a maudlin sentiment after all this time. It had no place in his current life. He did not want it to have a place.

Something else pulled at him. This woman, this Rey- Were their fates really intertwined somehow? Was it possible that a mere slip of a girl could be a threat to him? This girl from nowhere, who had no military training whatsoever? It was almost laughable. She had no followers, no special abilities. Nothing stood out about her whatsoever.

But the memory of Snoke's croaking laugh had chilled even him. "I think the sleeping princess needs to be awakened with a kiss," Snoke had told him enigmatically. "It's time for you to learn that love can be the most powerful weapon of all."

A strange statement, with no explanation as of yet. He had been taught that love, like sentiment and memories, was a useless, potentially dangerous distraction. One that he did not intend to fall victim to. And yet, something nagged at his mind with a persistence that did distract him. What was it about this Rey that they feared so much? And what were they keeping from him?

There was one advantage to being Kylo Ren, at least. Most people tried to avoid him. They went out of their way, in fact, to keep a distance whenever possible. But he had already known that it couldn't last long.

He saw the white shape take form in the darkness. He waited silently while the storm trooper approached.

He said no word in reply when he heard the report, "We've located the girl."


	2. Chapter 2

 

It was cold here, much colder than the scorching heat of the desert planet she had come from. Jakku's harsh and arid climate not only sucked the life out of any plants that struggled to survive there, but out of any living beings that tried to exist there as well. Rey narrowed her eyes as she gazed into the night-shrouded distance. The mountains here loomed close. They were a dark and jagged-edged, almost forbidding, mass against the horizon while Jakku had been a virtually flat and desolate terrain except for the dunes.

"I wanted a change," she murmured to herself, her teeth chattering as she looked around at the star-studded darkness. "But nothing this drastic." She wrapped her arms around her body and shivered.

"We're lucky we escaped with our lives," Finn had told her earlier.

She tried to be content with that, but she felt impatient. She was not used to inactivity and doing nothing made her feel restless. She'd had to work hard for so many years for her very existence, from the worn and faded clothes on her back to every meager bite of food that she put into her mouth. Now what was she supposed to do? She was used to taking care of herself and making all her decisions alone. With these men she felt even more lost, set adrift and woefully uncertain about her future. She hated feeling dependent on the others, but in some ways that's exactly what it had come down to.

Everyone else had decided on pretty much the same thing. To rest here for a few days and then try to decide what to do after that. Which in essence amounted to doing nothing. She didn't have much choice but to go along with their plan, ambiguous as it was. Her choices were very limited, almost nonexistent.

They were all very much aware that no place was safe. The First Order could wipe out entire worlds in a matter of seconds. Their technology had advanced so far that they could also find virtually anyone or anything in the galaxy, no matter where they were hiding. That's why the map was so important to them. It revealed a secret hiding place, one of the few that was still unknown to them.

"I doubt if anyone will find us here. They might even think we were killed or that we are still hiding on Jakku somewhere." Rey had said, hoping she was at least half right.

"Don't be so sure," Finn had replied. "You're talking about the First Order. If they're looking for something hard enough, they have ways of finding it. This droid has the map they're looking for. They already knew that  _we_  had the droid. The only question we should be asking ourselves is: How long will it take them to find us?"

No one had added to his comment. Maybe because no one had wanted to put their thoughts into words. Their chances looked pretty grim, anyway they looked at it.

"But they won't come  _here_ ," Rey insisted, stubborn enough, or perhaps naïve enough, to believe that she could be right. Maybe she needed to make herself believe that.

"Maybe you're right," Finn conceded. "But I wouldn't bet my life on it."

That's exactly what was at stake. Their lives.

Finn had decided to run and hide, to leave the droid behind and keep on the move, and he had advised her, and the others, to do the same thing. No one knew the First Order like he did, he had warned them all. And he wanted her to run  _with_  him, which made her question his motives since they were barely acquainted. She felt torn inside. Running didn't seem like much of an existence. Granted, she had no home to return to. Not that she could call the desolate, barren world she had lived in for the past dozen years or so an actual home. It had seemed more like she had been living out a prison sentence. A sentence of hopeless waiting and utter loneliness. She had waited so long, hoping against hope that someone would come back for her. She still hadn't given up hope entirely, but to realize one is completely alone in an entire galaxy was a grim verdict at best. A very depressing one. But to run with Finn just to avoid being alone- she couldn't do that.

What scared her the most, what had scared her all along, was that she would forget the past, that she would lose it completely. The few impressions she did remember were already fading until they were maddeningly elusive and hazy. If she should lose even that . . .

She wasn't going to allow that. It was all she had. If she had not been forced off of Jakku, the truth was that she would still be there. She would still be waiting. Jakku might not be much, but she had stayed because there had been some connection to her past that she had not been willing to let go of. All the love that was still so much a part of her heart, she had left it back there, even though it was such a tenuous thing. If someone  _should_  finally come looking for her, she wouldn't be there and they wouldn't be able to find her. After living with nothing but her hope for so long, she felt the pain of loss in her heart so deep that it was like an agony.

This planet, too, was a godforsaken outpost. She might not be completely alone now, but the men with her weren't really her friends. They barely knew each other. It was true that danger had a way of bringing people closer together faster than ordinary circumstances would allow, but she doubted the comradery would last. Finn was a reluctant friend at best. He was already making plans to leave her behind if she did not accompany him. And Han Solo was also obviously going to think of himself first whatever decision he made.

What  _were_  they going to do now? It was anyone's guess.

At least this place had far more to offer than Jakku. She was able to trade for new clothes. Even so, the clothes were barely warm enough.

She had taken a bath, washed the powdery sand from her body and rinsed it from her hair. She had changed into the new clothing. So great was the transformation that Finn had seemed speechless when she came downstairs. At first.

"I- I hardly recognized you," he had finally stammered, taking in her changed appearance from head to toe.

He kept staring at her and deep inside she admitted she didn't  _feel_  the same.

Han Solo had seemed surprised, too. His perusal was a little more subtle, but just as disconcerting. Both men made her feel terribly self-conscious. She ate a hearty meal with them, food being one of her priorities, and then they talked more about the map.

"We can't just walk away from this," Rey had said to the men. "That map is obviously very important. It could turn out to be important to all of us."

"You don't understand, sweetheart. This is war," Han Solo had said cynically. "And who wins in a war? No one. We all lose. Some just lose worse than others. I don't want to be one of them."

In the end she could not convince anyone to do anything other than what they had already decided to do. She was alone now,  _feeling_  her aloneness very deeply as she stared up at the black void above her. She saw snow begin to fall out of the darkness. Big, fat, fluffy white flakes. She had never seen snow before. It was beautiful. Magical. Almost hypnotic. The noiseless snowflakes fell all around her, jarring loose a long-ago memory at the edge of her mind. Suddenly it came back to her with a force that took her breath away. It was almost the same vision as her nightmares, only it seemed more real, more detailed, and she wasn't asleep this time. She felt like she was fading into a dark, bottomless tunnel, like she was being pulled back by some invisible force. Again there was that strange sensation that she always felt, that she was being haunted by someone else's memories.

Feeling very exposed and vulnerable, she staggered forward to get out of the open. There was an opening in the wall before her. A doorway. The door opened readily, but when she pushed it wider, it was so black inside that she couldn't see anything. Still, she took several steps inside, feeling her way through the darkness, almost in a panic now as she tried to steady her deep breathing. As she leaned a trembling hand against the rough stone wall beside her, the vision continued, became more intense, came over her in almost breath-stealing waves. It was like a wall was opening up before her.

As she was pulled deeper into the vision, she saw more than she had ever seen before. There were fires burning, the garish red light writhing against massive stone walls, like castle walls that were looming high somewhere nearby. The firelight was also reflecting off pools of water on the ground because somehow inside she knew that it had rained. The sky above was the darkest, mistiest void. The intense darkness after a storm.

She was standing alone in the darkness. It was so black around her. Black as pitch. Blacker even than black, like the color had been stripped from the world. There was a light in the distance through the trees. She walked towards the light. It flooded her face, washing over her. It wasn't normal light. It was bright, strange light, something  _felt_ deep inside her.

The scene around her was surreal. Everything was dreamlike. Everything moved in eerie slow motion - the mist, even the red glare of the flames moved as if obeying the ghostly summons of some unseen hand that made time slow down, go backwards. It was not snowflakes that she saw drifting down all around her now, but ashes.

There was Terror in the darkness. Where the light also was. But the terror was in her chest, too. The feeling grew, almost overwhelming her. She could sense something else not far ahead of her. Like an animal stalking in the darkness. But it was waiting for her, too.

Then she saw a dark figure standing at the edge of a black chasm. His face lifted and he looked at her. The paleness of death was in his face. He had scars, too, and he had been pierced by fire. He tried to cry out to her some message, but he was so far away in the darkness that she couldn't hear the words.

She wanted to help him but she knew she couldn't because they were separated by the chasm. She knew how much fire must hurt. Finally there was an explosion of flames and she was glad that he was dead so he wouldn't feel any more pain. He had died bravely. Never making a sound. He had died willingly, perhaps, for a reason. A sacrifice to save someone.

The vision shifted and she saw a group of caped, hooded men standing in the darkness. They were like shadows half hidden within the mist. They belonged in that place, and in some way she belonged there, too. But there were also evil whisperings in the mist and flashes of blue light. It was so frightening that she huddled down, cowering beneath it all. She had fought back in some way, but she couldn't remember how.

And then she became aware of a man in a mask. He stood at a little distance, a darker shape among the shadows, a powerful, commanding presence that was cloaked in mystery, in deep and fathomless secrets. His very silence was terrifying in itself. He turned slowly towards her. As the edge of his cape swirled slowly in the wind, she felt the power of him. She felt his eyes watching her.

But the wall was closing up again and the vision immediately began to fade, like a black curtain had come down upon a stage. She stayed very, very still for a long time, breathing heavily, seeing the darkness around her but feeling as if she was lost in that darkness, feeling paralyzed. It seemed that she would fall all to pieces if she moved even the slightest bit.

As her eyes adjusted, she realized that a faint light glowed in the darkness before her now. Still half held in the grip of the vision, she saw a trunk against the wall. She was drawn helplessly to it. Almost in a daze she lifted the lid and reached out with her hand . . .

"Rey."

She whirled around. Who had spoken her name? She didn't know anyone here. And no one should know her. That set off alarms. While she stood there, still shaken from the vision, yellow-gold, cat-like eyes blinked in the darkness.

"How do you know my name?" she asked.

"Why, I heard your friends speak it, of course," came a voice from the shadows.

A woman in flowing robes came closer. "Sabra wishes to speak with you," she heard.

"Who is Sabra?" She tried very hard to make her voice sound steadier this time.

"A teller of fortunes."

Rey saw the pale oval of another woman's face in the darkness not far away, but she turned to go. "I have no money for fortunes." The vision had left her feeling weak and vulnerable. She wanted to be alone, away from these people.

"This fortune is free."

Now she was suspicious. This could very well be some kind of trap. Maybe they meant to lure her away, to rob her, to murder her. She didn't know. Maybe Finn was right and the First Order had already found them.

The golden eyes continued to glow with an eerie luminescence in the darkness. She was highly embarrassed at having been caught here, especially in such a vulnerable state. She was even more ashamed that she had actually opened a box that didn't belong to her. What if these women thought she was a thief?

She murmured an apology. "I'm sorry. I lost my way."

But a voice that came from the shadows said enigmatically, "Come out of the darkness, child. Perhaps it is that you have finally found your way."

Strangely, Rey trusted and obeyed that voice. But she looked around for any threats that might be hiding in the darkness and asked nervously, "What do you mean?"

"I mean you must survive and I will help you do that," the woman called Sabra answered her. "You felt something. You were drawn here."

"Drawn here?" Rey echoed. Yes, strangely that seemed to be true, but she shook her head, still strangely tangled up inside emotionally. "I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. Not yet. But you have a destiny to fulfill."

"Really." This was probably the same fortune she told everyone.

But Rey went very still when a small blue light flared from a lantern. She could not suppress a small gasp. Moon crystals flashed brilliantly all around her. She saw that they formed the walls and the ceiling of the passageway, even part of the floor. Moon crystals were rare. And they were beautiful. She had seen them once in a cave on Jakku. But nothing like this. When the light hit the walls, Rey saw that the walls themselves were made up of dark sapphire- and amethyst-colored clusters of crystals that flashed in the blue light from the lantern. They were sparkling with a brilliance that was breathtaking. Normally, moon crystals glowed only in moonlight but the lantern light made them glow here.

"The crystals make this a powerful place," Sabra said, watching her face closely. "A safe place. You have seen these before."

That was true, but how did she know that?

"Are you able to get inside my head somehow?" Rey asked. "Can you read my thoughts?"

Sabra laughed under her breath. "That  _would_  be a handy skill. But no, I cannot do that. And even if I could do that, could I have created these?" Her hand waved wide to indicate the crystals. "What I  _can_  see is the path fate has laid out for you. That path is like a trail of these moon crystals. They are seen only in a special kind of light in the darkness, to keep it hidden from evil." She pointed to the tunnel that led off into pitch blackness. "There is a narrow passage in and a narrow passage out. Leading . . . " Her voice trailed off.

"Leading where?"

"Where you must go."

Rey shook her head and frowned. "You are talking in riddles."

"You will soon come face to face with the answers you seek. You already have them inside you. The First Order, what was the Empire," Sabra went on. "Has been a poison in too many lives for too long. At its core is pure, deeply-rooted evil. A force of towering evil. It is the same evil entity that finds a foothold again and again. Through those that do its bidding.

"There among the ruins of your heart, Rey, is your reflection of the truth. Do not be afraid to look into the face of truth, even though truth may not always be where we think we will find it. Deep inside you something has survived that is stronger than anything they can do to you. You stand armored in innocence. And there you shall remain. It's the one thing they cannot pierce."

Sabra nodded slowly in the darkness as she peered more closely at Rey's face. "Innocence. It's at the core. It's the life force. And though they don't understand it, they fear it. It's a strength. They will try to strip the truth from you. Just as they will try to destroy your innocence. You must not be afraid that the darkness is too deep in your quest for the truth."

"How do I know where the right truth is?" Rey asked, very confused by all that she was hearing. None of this was making any kind of sense.

"There are no different truths," Sabra answered her. "There is only one. Your dreams are revelations. Of the past and the future. You still perceive these things as children perceive."

" _Why_  am I seeing all these things?"

"To bind your whole self together. The ancient enemies still feel a need to destroy and they will use whatever weapon they can find. They try to tell themselves they have already won the war, that it was decided years ago. But that is all illusion. You will take your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. You  _must_  allow yourself to remember. Until you do, the past will continue to creep up on you as it just did. But like a ghost, it will remain a thing you cannot confront.

"He will bow down, near death. But you will whisper truth to him and make him live. And that which you fear the most will become your greatest strength."

_He?_  Who was she talking about?  _What_  was she talking about? Rey was frustrated by the woman's cryptic words.

"Do you even know who you are speaking to?" Rey asked. "I have barely managed to keep myself alive for most of my life. How can I think about saving anyone else?"

"Because you are not alone in this."

"I have been alone almost all of my life," Rey informed her, some of her emotion coming to the surface, surprising her. "Those  _friends_  I came here with were merely an accident."

"No accident. Your friends are being guided to safety even as we speak."

"To safety?"

"This planet is already under attack by the First Order."

That startled her. But how did she even know this woman was telling her the truth?

"The crystals only work for so long. They have already probed beyond them. They already know that you are here," Sabra went on calmly in spite of such alarming revelations. "But the safest place for you temporarily was here underground."

"I can't hide here," Rey protested. She tried to pass by the woman.

"Wait." A claw-like hand fell on her arm. "Your friends. They will all play an important role in the Rebellion. Perhaps not all of them willingly. There will be great loss of life before this attack is over. The slaughter will be significant. But you must accept what you cannot change."

"I can  _try_  to make a difference."

"And die trying. It is important that you do not die, too. And you would have fought to the death."

"Isn't that my choice to make?"

"Your sacrifice would be pointless." Sabra walked over to the trunk and opened it. She took out a strange cylindrical metal object and handed it to Rey. "Take this and come with me."

Sabra then held the small lantern out at her side and led Rey deeper into the darkness.

"This light will help guide you. This tunnel will lead you to the Ezari Forest."

It was still dark, even with the light. Rey could see that steps led down and the way was very narrow, but she became aware of the darker forms of people huddled along the walls.

"These people must survive," Sabra went on. "You will lead them to safety in the Ezari Forest, but you must hurry."

Men, women and children were huddled there with fearful eyes in the darkness. There were more there than she had realized.

"There is nothing we can do to prevent what is happening up on the surface," Sabra said with a deep drag of sadness in her voice. "But we can save  _them_.  _You_  can save them."

And then she said, "No matter how hopeless everything might seem, we cannot yield. We must fight by whatever means we can. You must lead them."

She indicated the cylinder in Rey's hand. "Guard the light saber well. There are others who seek it."

Rey looked down. "I don't even know how to use this. What good is it to me?"

"That will become clear to you when the time comes. Go now."

"Why can't these people stay here?'

"Because this tunnel is about to be overrun."

There was a murmur of fear among the people. They were all looking at Rey as if she was some kind of savior. But she wasn't. She didn't want to be responsible for these people. How unfortunate for them that they were so desperate that they were looking to her to save them.

"Don't be afraid," Sabra told her more gently now. "All will turn out as it is supposed to turn out. Now go. You must hurry."

She did hurry, so quickly that she didn't hear Sabra's last words: "Your destiny awaits you. May the Force give you strength to bear what is waiting for you out there."

With the people following behind her, Rey ran. Until they were outside and surrounded by trees. Only then did Rey stop to get her bearings. She paused and turned to look at several lights glowing through the woods.

Fires.

Like those in her vision.

And then she saw something else moving through the darkness, much closer than the fires.

Storm troopers.

"Lord Ren," one of the storm troopers called out.

"I see her," she heard.

The deep masculine voice seemed almost as sinister as the black, caped figure that took shape suddenly out of the shadows and loomed before her, blocking her path. The man, if you could call him a man, was clothed entirely in black, from the mask all the way down to his tall boots. Perhaps he was not a man at all. She did not know. He must be hiding something horrible behind the mask.

A chill ran down her spine, something that had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold night air or the snow that was still sifting through the trees. She could feel the eyes back of that mask staring at her with an intensity that frightened her. It was as if he could see through her, right down to the very depths of her soul. And yet she stood her ground. She could do one thing at least. She could give the people escaping into the woods more time to get away, for it seemed to her that the caped figure and the storm troopers were intent only upon her. At least at the moment. They slowly circled her, like hungry wolves closing in on their helpless, doomed prey. But she wasn't helpless, she reminded herself. She had a weapon in her hands. She gripped it more tightly, praying to have the courage to use it to protect herself.

The figure in black strode forward a few paces. And then he stopped abruptly as the light saber in her hands blazed forth like a flaming torch in the darkness. He was close enough that Rey could see the gleam of surprise in his eyes. She could see, too, the light of the saber reflected in those dark, unfathomable depths.

She could feel the deep hum in her hands. It was an energy, a force that vibrated deep inside her, that connected with something at her core.

The man before her seemed not to know what to do for the space of several heartbeats. And then he held out a black gloved hand, the palm towards her. She was instantly paralyzed. The light saber immediately fell from her nerveless fingers to the snow-dusted ground.

She fought the terrible power over her. She fought it until for a moment she thought she would win. But she could not get past the hold he had over her. Even when he came close, she could do nothing. Even though her heart was pounding wildly. Even though she could feel herself trembling with fear and so much more. But she could not move a single muscle, nor utter a single word. Again, the strange sensation, through it all, that the masked man was looking at her like she was some enigma, some problem that he could not solve. She could  _feel_  that behind the terrifying, concealing mask.

He kept his hand aloft, paced a few steps around her, watching her as one might watch a strange new specimen in a zoo. Then a thought came to her spontaneously. Out of her anger, she wanted to call him a coward for hiding his face. At that very same moment, through a drift of snowflakes, she saw his head snap up as if he had read her thoughts. And that terrified her even more. Was he able to get inside her head?

"There are people running into the woods," she heard.

The deep voice seemed very close to her now as it said, "Let them go."

"But our orders- "

"I said let them go," the man, or the being, behind the mask said in a deep, dangerously-suppressed voice over his shoulder. "Are you questioning  _my_  orders?" he said in a voice like low, angry thunder.

The storm trooper fell back, his entire manner and posture like a reprimanded, submissive dog.

The man in the mask turned his attention back to her. There was a moment of awareness. His sheer physical presence affected Rey even in her current state of helplessness. The raw masculine force of him awed her even as he caught her up in his arms and everything went black around her.


	3. Chapter 3

He was on one knee before her, but she reminded herself that it was not a knightly nor a noble posture. He was more like a bird of prey studying her with morbid patience, waiting to see if she was sufficiently weakened. She found his silence maddening, decided that he was probably purposely remaining silent because he thought that it would intimidate her even more. If so, it was working. And yet part of her was also deeply, intensely aware of the raw male power that seemed to emanate from his very being. That she found even more unsettling, more invasive to her peace of mind.

She tested the straps that bound her wrists. More out of her restless agitation than out of any hope that she could loosen them. She'd always had an aversion to being confined in any way and being helpless like this almost panicked her. It made her feel vulnerable, exposed. Anger against her captivity was among the tangle of emotions seething within her. So was frustration. A kind of aggravated energy surged through her limbs while her nerves screamed to be set free. And yet she realized full well that there was no escape. Even if she could get loose, there was just the one door and it was probably well guarded on the other side. And there was the man. If he really was a man.

She had been in dangerous situations before. Nothing as bad as this, but she knew that panicking wasn't going to help. She was waging a fierce internal battle to compose herself, to get control over her thoughts, to strengthen her resolve against the panicking. She did not want to show fear before this man. She felt instinctively that it would put her at a disadvantage. She might be scared to death, but she was not going to show it. In spite of her resolve, she stopped tugging at the straps and held her breath when he silently rose to his feet before her.

He was tall. She had to look up to meet his gaze. The black cape was thrown back so that it was hanging negligently down his broad back. She drew in a fortifying breath. All she could do was stare back at a mask, trying to read the eyes behind it. Even though those eyes were hidden, she could almost feel the intensity of his dark gaze. The mask was like a black curtain covering a mystery stage, the scene behind it obscure and impenetrable.

He had stormed the first barrier of her mental defenses, but she did not know this. He did that with everyone. It was automatic. The first layer had been searched but that was almost a casual probing, one that he usually didn't give much thought to. Unless something interesting stood out. And something definitely stood out with this woman. There were layers to her that he did not often encounter. There was something different about her. Something complex. When he saw her tug at the straps, he had a spontaneous thought to take them off her. A strange impulse when he should be thinking how best to use her frustration and her fear to his advantage. Yet while he intended to know more about her, there was also something that almost intimidated him.  _That_  surprised him. It was frustrating, yet intriguing at the same time. He could not explain it. There was a hesitation, a reluctance to approach her that he had never felt before.

As she  _felt_  him watching her, Rey's thoughts were wildly chaotic. Even as he stood before her, he did not speak. While the deep silence continued to fill the room, the low, subdued light intensified the shadows all around them. Just the thought of what he had done to her in the forest unnerved her. That had been bad enough, but what else was he capable of doing? When he stepped closer to her, she released her breath in a short exclamation of alarm, one that, to her dismay, she could not hold back.

The fact that she was stirringly beautiful didn't mean that much to Kylo Ren. He had seen many beautiful women in many different places. Of course he was attracted to her on some level. It was a natural male instinct to be drawn to beauty. He studied her features. They were delicate, though strong somehow. Passionate, almost to the point of sensuousness, yet innocent.

She was peering up at him through long sooty lashes with eyes that were an unusual shade of blue-violet. Eyes that he remembered. It was a long time ago, but, yes, he was seeing the same eyes. They'd had the ability to almost look through him then, even at so young an age. Her eyes were haunting to him even now.

She surprised him by asking, "You like to keep yourself hidden in mystery and shadows, don't you?"

He surprised  _her_  by nodding, but still he didn't speak a word.

Again the thought came to her that he was a coward to hide his face. Was he disfigured or hideously ugly under the mask? Was he something less than human? As if he read her thoughts, he slowly and deliberately took the mask off.

She had been wrong. He was neither ugly nor deformed. He was not at all what she had expected. His face was strong and handsome. Darkly handsome. His brows were drawn into what was probably a habitual frown. There was a cynicism to the set of his mouth. The masculine line of his jaw was hard and lean. It flexed with the tautness of the muscles there.

Kylo Ren himself stood unmasked before her. His ruthlessness was legendary. His mercilessness was infamous. His power? Something that was feared throughout the galaxy.

Perhaps foolishly, she dared to challenge him. "Is it your plan to keep me tied up here forever?"

"In this way I can make sure I have your undivided attention," he replied, not disturbed in the least by the scorn in her voice.

"This is the only way you can deal with an unarmed woman? To tie her up? Some might consider that weakness," she said contemptuously, rashly.

He did not answer her. He reverted back to his silence, tilting his head slightly to one side as he considered her.

"I'm not afraid of you," she said impulsively, yielding for a moment to her frustration and anger, uncomfortable under his intense scrutiny, forgetting for a moment who she was talking to.

"I have learned  _one_  thing." A smile tightened one corner of his mouth, the only sign of a dark and feral humor. "I now know that you're capable of lying. You  _are_  afraid," he said with provoking softness.

"And were you aware that the people you slaughtered were also afraid?" There was a heavy pause as the impact of her words hung suspended on the silence.

But even that did not disrupt his calm demeanor. "How you talk," he murmured half to himself. "Why do you not cower in fear?" he asked curiously. "Do you know the hardened soldiers that have crumbled before me?"

"I suppose that adding  _me_ , a woman who is bound and helpless, to your list of conquests will make you feel powerful."

She saw the muscles tense in his jaw. Something cold and dangerous glittered in his dark eyes. She had made him angry. Not a good move on her part. But she already knew this wasn't going to end well.

Again that wolfish, humorless half-smile showed itself briefly. "Your rebellion against me knows no bounds," he said darkly. "But helpless? Somehow I cannot find it in me to think of you that way. Reckless? Yes. Foolish, definitely. It was foolish of you to decide to sacrifice yourself for people you didn't know."

His chin went out slightly. "How did you know where to find the light saber?" he asked suddenly.

That she had no real answer to. So she couldn't tell him anything even if he tried to force it out of her. No amount of torture would make the slightest difference, if that's what he had planned for her. He was right, she admitted to herself. She was afraid of him and what he could do to her. She'd had a taste of that already. Yet something drove her. Some reckless spark of rebellion inside her continued to defy this situation, continued to defy  _him_.

"Those people were civilians. Women and children among them," she charged, watching him warily from beneath her dark lashes, surprised at the intensity of her emotions.

An even more brittle hardness crept into his gaze. "War  _is_  brutality," he said coldly. "And I should warn you that taunting me isn't going to do you any good."

She looked at him a moment before she asked, "What are you going to do to me?"

"There is much to consider here," he murmured, and then he began to pace as if he were deep in thought.

"Does a monster even have to contemplate his choices?" she asked.

The black cape swirled as he turned back to her. He glared at her like a wolf meeting a challenge. He stepped closer to her and arched a dark, warning brow as he looked down at her. Too late she realized her mistake. No man, even this one apparently, liked being called a monster.

She braced herself against him. Against his anger. But even after gathering up all her willpower, nothing could prepare her for the potent masculine force that flooded over her in a massive surge as he leaned even closer.

A strange shiver went clear through her, a tremor that vibrated through her chest and down along her spine. It took her breath away. It was some kind of inexplicable, stark awareness of him that touched something deep inside her. She had felt it when he had been close to her before. But it was even worse now as he looked straight into her eyes, making her feel like he could see down into her very soul.

"You've grown very beautiful." This was said matter-of-factly, as if he were commenting on nothing more noteworthy than the weather. Of all the things he could have said to her, that was the last thing she expected.

"Do you think that flattery will make me think better of you?" she scoffed. "From you, the worst kind of monster?"

She turned her face away from him as if to emphasize the contempt behind her words. But he reached out and seized her chin in his hand, forcing her face up until she had no choice but to stare into those intensely dark eyes. His face was livid, his very expression a threat.

"You mean your words to be as sharp as a dagger's blade. But I will advise you again to end your insults before you go any further."

She could feel the tension in him as his gaze ran down her unbound curls, and then down the length of her body, slowly and thoroughly. That gaze seemed to affect her like a physical touch.

He had let go of her face, but her heart was still beating wildly. Her eyes were wide with alarm. She wished she could take the words back. But of course, it was too late to do that.

"Don't fear that I will- " he began, watching her face closely. He let his breath out in a contemptuous snort. "I don't have to take women against their will. And despite what you think of me," he said with deliberate softness. "I am not a lusting monster who has no control over his baser instincts."

He straightened, putting a little distance between them again.

"So here we are. Again. And once more I hold your fate in my hands."

"What do you mean  _again_?"

His lips curved into a mocking sneer.

"I mean fate can be brutally ironic. Do you really not remember me? Even your voice is one that I can scarce forget. It sinks deep into a man."

"What game are you playing with me?"

He leaned forward again. His voice lowered, became more intimate, and far, far more dangerous. That terrible smile with such a promise of evil lifted the corner of his mouth.

"Truth is truth. And sometimes it must be faced. Shall I tell you what you have hidden in the darkest corners of your mind?"

She closed her eyes tightly. "There's no way I can stop you from saying anything," she said, hating that her voice was so unsteady. Her breast was rising and falling more rapidly now. She did not want to hear what he might say to her. Who was he and what did he know about her? If her past, or her future, was tied in with him, she did not want to know.

"Do not speak to me of weakness," he hissed. "When you will not let yourself remember."

She finally opened her eyes and looked up slowly. She saw that his gaze had not wavered. He was still regarding her steadily, but his eyes had grown cruel and mocking.

"Being very strong does not mean being very cruel," she whispered.

"Damn your moralizing," he ground out. "What do you know of cruelty? Or strength? You test my patience. And while I find this battle between us somewhat intriguing, we are wasting our time here. You will tell me what I want to know about the map and about the droid."

He said this with such an air of cold surety that it sent a tremor of trepidation through her.

"I have nothing to tell you."

The heavy silence that followed her words made Rey swallow hard. Her breast rose and fell even faster. Her breath seemed to catch in her chest, in part because his nearness was having such a terrible, unaccountable effect on her. She felt terror, yes, for what he was about to do to her. But there was something else. Something she had never felt from a man before. This was about his maleness. And while it horrified her, on some level some innate female part of her was responding to him against her will. She did not want him to know that. She would do anything to keep him from knowing.

She glanced uneasily about her, but there was nothing and no one that could help her now.

"You embrace the darkness," she said, trembling now, unable to keep silent as desperation came flooding to the surface.

"Very true," he answered. "But there is a darker side to all of us. Even you."

She drew in a deep breath, but it did not stop the trembling. Nor the awful sensation of dread that was building in her chest.

_Lord, please give me strength against him._

His hand rose. The palm was towards her as it had been in the forest. She actually flinched and heard herself squeak like a frightened mouse before the claws of a cat intent on making her its next meal. But he merely straightened a lock of tangled hair that fell over her shoulder.

"This will be so much easier if you don't fight me."

"Easier for you."

He almost smiled at that. He should have known that she would be defiant to the end. He would not have expected anything less of her.

"I told you before, I have nothing to tell you."

"I will decide that for myself."

She felt his husky words settle deep inside her. As he leaned closer, she felt infused by his presence, by his warmth, straight down to her core, even though he wasn't touching her in any way. Despite the fragile courage that had sustained her so far, she felt a renewed surge of panic. She began to fight him, in every way possible.

"Don't . . . Please . . . " she whispered brokenly, hating the note of pleading in her voice.

"You can choose to cooperate with me . . . " she heard. "Or not. What did you see?"

An agonizing silence lengthened between them as he forced his way deeper into her thoughts.

Amazing. He had almost admired her spirit  _before_. But that was nothing compared to the strength of will that met him when he tried to reach deeper inside. But there was no question that he would win here.

"What did you see?" he repeated.

Had he spoken out loud? she wondered with a detached part of her mind. Or was she reading  _his_  silent thoughts?

"I saw- " she breathed, her words trailing off. "I  _see_ \- "

She suddenly sensed the formidability of  _his_  walls. They were incredibly, strongly, massively structured. Against invasion it seemed. She saw something else.  _His_  loneliness was deep. In a dark, untouched corner of his soul she felt awful solitude and darkness.

"The darkness is fraught with trickery," she said in a ghost of a voice as she stood before  _his_  darkness. "Yet you continue to exist within its shadows, unable to break free."

He blinked, frowned, lost his concentration. What was happening to him? What had she done to him? He felt  _her_  push past  _his_  boundaries.

He backed up, taking several steps away from her.

They had connected emotionally in some way. In a way that was profound. In a way that shook him to the core. It was something he had never felt before and a bond was forged between them. Entirely against his will.

"They want you to believe that you are a devil, for they have treated you that way, and deep inside you are afraid to have anyone see the dark things that are inside you. You will allow no one close to see the wounding of your soul. You carry this around with you like heavy armor. But if someone were to touch, unafraid, those terrible things- " She stopped and said very soberly, as if it were some dark and terrible verdict, "The journey is from within. It always was."

No one had ever spoken to him like that. No one had ever  _dared_  speak to him like that.

"And I?" she went on. "You- you do know me. You knew me  _then_. And I knew you. Past all those shadows that we hid behind."

She stared at him mutely then, all the pain and the confusion clear on her face in that very devastating, very unguarded moment.


	4. Chapter 4

Han Solo scowled and said, "A legend is a legend, Chewy. That doesn't mean it has anything to do with fact. You know I don't believe in that superstitious garbage."

Finn looked between Han and Chewbacca and asked, "What's this about a legend?"

"Don't ask," Han answered him. "Because you really don't want to know."

But Finn didn't let it drop. "You were talking about Rey. Is there something about her that I should know?"

Han clearly did not want to discuss it any further, but he sighed and answered the question anyway, even though a thread of sarcasm ran through his words. "There's a legend that says a female warrior, or princess - depends on which version of the legend you're listening to - would rise from the desert and join forces with the dark side. That the alliance would become so powerful that it would upset the balance of the galaxy like never before. Chew thinks Rey could be her."

It could be said that Chewbacca's loyalty at times blinded him, but now he gave Han a sharp, sidelong glance.

"What makes you think that?" Finn asked Chewbacca.

After Chewbacca gave his answer, Han shrugged and translated for him. "Rey came from a desert planet. People said she used that light saber like she'd been born with one in her hand. Add to that the fact that there are people looking for her. Really hard."

Chewbacca growled out another comment.

"I'm aware of that," Han agreed grudgingly. "We let her fall right into his hands."

They began to argue back and forth again, but most of what they said made no sense to Finn.

At one point Chewbacca was staring straight ahead. He grunted out some remark under his breath which made Han jerk his head around.

"Let it go," Han warned darkly. "I didn't make him what he is. What he  _was_. And for your information, that had nothing to do with him. He was ready to blame me for everything. You know as well as I do that he was defiant from the moment he was born."

Chewbacca flicked his hand in the air impatiently and said something in protest.

"There was darkness inside him already," Han snarled back. "I didn't create that. I knew Darth Vader's history. I knew he would follow the same path. And I wasn't  _sentencing_  him. It was the truth. Everything that has happened proves that I was right. I guess it was payment for all the wrongs I ever committed in my life," he mumbled to himself. "Having a son like that."

When Chewbacca voiced his opinion again, Han looked uncomfortable for a moment, like he didn't know what to say. " _Consequences_? Why are you bringing  _that_  up? I told her I didn't want- " He shook his head. "I didn't have a father around when I was growing up. Do you see me whining about it?"

Chewbacca was right when he said that there were consequences for everything. But Han Solo still spent most of his time running away from consequences. He wasn't about to change. Not at his age. When he was younger there might have been a certain charm in his reckless, devil-may-care attitude. But at this point, it was anything but charming.

"Crying about the past won't change anyth- " Han broke off what he had been about to say and muttered under his breath, "He's a lost cause. He always was."

It was an old argument between the two of them, but it had gotten especially heated because Chewbacca had never been so outspoken before.

"I'm not going to go over this again," Han told him, but it seemed like he needed to get the last word in because he added, "Of course I was hard on him. For all the good that it did. Obviously I wasn't hard enough. But there's no sense re-hashing it. The past is dead. I wish to God that he was, too."

Chewbacca made a sound that could only be described as a startled, outraged whimper.

"Getting this ship back was my priority. It still is," Han told him, undaunted. "But if by some crazy outside chance the legend is true, then you're right. This could be bad. Really bad."

"She did use the light saber. Against- " Finn began.

"Kylo Ren," Han finished and then ground his teeth tightly together as he closed his mouth in a grim line.

Chewbacca made another low growl.

Han didn't look at him as he replied, "I call him that because that's the name he has chosen for himself."

Chewbacca didn't say anything more. He was ignoring Han and looking off to the side.

"The bottom line is that we can't leave her with- him," Han went on. "Who knows what he'll do to her."

Chewbacca couldn't keep himself from responding. He made another quiet comment, this one under his breath.

"Of course that's all. We're doing this because it's the right thing to do," Han snapped, but his eyes shifted nervously for a moment.

Finn was trying hard to put the pieces of their conversation together when Chewbacca and Han began to argue again. They couldn't seem to help themselves.

Finn interrupted them. "Arguing's not going to do any good. What's important is that we find her."

* * *

_"They are looking for her," Kylo Ren repeated quietly. "Together."_

"It appears that way."

"Yes, I can- sense that," the man in the mask said to himself. "There must be a reason," he speculated thoughtfully. "It seems she leaves an impact wherever she goes."

There was a prolonged silence before the other man said, "It may be significant that after all this time you have found her again. Rumors of the legend are surfacing again. Do you think she is going to continue fighting you?"

"Let's just say I don't anticipate her being anything but an unwilling guest," Kylo Ren answered with grim humor.

"And she did not remember?"

"She remembers now. How much I am not sure."

"General Hux has requested to see you."

"Hux," Kylo repeated contemptuously. "Of course he has. Snoke will be asking to see me as well. I don't know why he hasn't done so already."

He would deal with them both in time. As for Rey, he had purposely avoided her for two days. But now he needed to show her that he was in control. Of everything. Even of her. She may have seen things inside him he would have preferred to keep to himself, but it was like a chess game. He could block her once she made a move and revealed more of her thought processes.

He looked up. "They are all searching for her, but each one of them is motivated by something entirely different. She is like a flicker in the darkness. All eyes are coming to focus on her. Let's see if we can't keep her in the darkness a little longer."

_Two days._

He had left her wondering for two days when each moment might be her last.

While the early morning light came filtering in through the silent room, Rey paced restlessly. She wanted answers, but there was no one to give them to her. She could not fathom why he would keep her waiting like this. Why he would keep her completely in the dark. Was he trying to wear her down emotionally? Or was he off terrorizing the galaxy and too busy to bother with her?

When Kylo Ren finally entered the room on the third day, Rey stood there rigid and unmoving, like a prisoner awaiting a life-or-death verdict.

She watched him warily from beneath her lashes. "Have you finally come to grace me with your presence?" she asked facetiously as she faced him. In spite of herself, she couldn't help shifting her gaze away from him for a moment as she took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. "After leaving me here alone to suffer for two days."

He was not wearing his mask and she saw him frown. "Suffer? I should think these accommodations would be more comfortable than the desert wasteland you came from." He looked at the empty plates on the table. "You're obviously eating better than you were able to before."

Kylo Ren. Ruthlessly handsome. Smoldering and dark. The hard lines of his face appeared even more menacing as a muscle tightened in his cheek. "Careful what you say," he cautioned her with a dark and wicked humor. "I might misunderstand and think that you actually missed me."

She was pale but she was defiant as she faced him. He watched the changing emotions that warred for dominance in her eyes as she pushed several loose tendrils of hair back from her face. What emotions were they? He could only guess. Resentment. Mistrust. Suspicion. Maybe even anger. Definitely frustration.

He sensed that her restlessness was like that of a caged beast. She was frustrated from being penned up night and day with no escape and no choices left to her. He realized it, even understood it. He would have felt the same way, probably worse, if he was in her position.

"Inactivity doesn't seem to agree with you," he said in his deep, irritatingly calm voice as he stood before her.

"You mean imprisonment," she corrected as she stared straight back at him. Rash words with this man, but rebellion against him rose to the surface, rebellion that was wild and uncontainable.

He lifted a dark brow but ignored her remark and gazed steadily back at her. "I sense that you are angry with me. And maybe a little curious?" A hint of surprise flickered in his eyes for the briefest moment.

"Curious?" she scoffed faintly. "What would I be curious about?"

She  _had_  experienced a spontaneous, fleeting thought that he looked lethally handsome in the morning light, and wondered about the irony of such an evil man being so good looking. But she tried to wipe that from her mind, afraid that he could read her thoughts. Anger seemed to be the only shield available to her. She tried to hold onto the anger.

"You are keeping me here against my will, and you have left me wondering what you intend to do with me. Of course I am angry."

He stared silently back at her. His voice hardened slightly as he said, "And you have left me with the unwanted task of deciding what to do with you."

"I won't assume that mercy will factor into your decision," she said impetuously. "You're too much of a brute to understand what that means."

A brief, hard smile that had nothing to do with humor appeared for a moment on his face. "Yes, well, I'm sure we can both agree that mercy is not a part of my makeup."

"I won't argue with you about that. Not from all that I have heard. But are you at least going to tell me now how I knew you in the past? And what happened that night and why I was there in the first place?"

"You were strong-willed then," he said as he frowningly considered her. "I see that has not changed. If you are that impatient to know, I must first warn you that you may not like the answers. Tell me what you remember."

She drew a deep breath and reluctantly shared what she could recall. "Everything in my mind is scattered, in pieces. It doesn't all make sense. There was darkness. And fires. A castle. At least the ruins of a castle." She looked up at him. "It was a castle, wasn't it?"

"The Castle of Ren," he told her. "What do you remember of that?"

"It was a dark and haunted place. A lonely place. Deserted. And I was there alone. No, I wasn't. You were there and some other men. All of you were dressed in black. You kept your distance, but now I- I'm very confused."

"What else do you remember?" he prompted, trying to draw the memories out, aware of her fears and her half attempts to block them.

"It was a place of sadness and sorrow. I don't know how long I was there, but my days were an agony of loneliness while I was there. I can still hear the haunting sound of the wind. And- and ravens rising into the mist as darkness fell . . . " Her voice trailed off with the remembering. She closed her eyes as if seeing internally into a far, far distance. "There was something else. There was something that touched me very deeply. Something about the castle itself that seemed to connect me to that place. Something I can still feel but I can't explain."

"Ren was the ruin of a secret temple," he said.

"I don't know how or why, but I lived there for a time," she said, carefully feeling her way through the memories as they came to her from out of the darkness, flooding her with the emotions that came with them.

He nodded slowly, watching her face carefully.

"You were there, too," she whispered in a ghost of a voice as the memory became clearer.

"There was power there," he said. "From the ancient times. You only have to stand there to realize just how alive the past still is.

"There was a battle there a long time ago in which every living thing was slaughtered," he went on. "The castle ran with streams of blood for days. The blood of all the inhabitants of Ren soaked into the ground and made it hallowed. Ren became a graveyard overnight, but it also became a sacred place that still holds much magic. Sometimes it seems you can still hear the voices of the dead on the wind. You can still feel what they felt in their last moments. How they cry out for vengeance."

"Was I a survivor?" she asked.

"No one survived. You had shown signs of being force sensitive. You were taken to Ren to see how powerful the force was in you. Your parents had sent you there to see how you would react. But they didn't dare take you there themselves. It would have been too dangerous. What else do you remember?"

Her eyes widened as she looked at him. "You killed a man and kidnapped me. Or should I say you had one of your- " She stopped and then asked, "Were they knights?"

He nodded.

"You had one of your knights kidnap me." She looked at him imploringly. "I thought that we- "

He blew out his own frustrated breath and interrupted her before she could go any further. "Is that how you remember it?" His frown deepened. "I suppose a child might not see the whole truth of a thing.

"There is a legend," he went on. "That says a female warrior - some say that is  _you_  - will ally with the darkness, - some say that is  _me_  - and become a strength, for some a threat, more powerful than anything that has been seen before."

"A legend? Why should I believe anything you say to me, much less a legend?"

"Because you know in your heart it is true."

"I don't want it to be true," she whispered and shook her head as she looked away from him.

He ignored the pain and confusion that he saw in her eyes and said, "Sometimes we cannot choose reality. What else did you see?"

She crossed her arms in front of her and asked in a breathless, faltering voice, "The- the man that was killed- Who was he? I watched him die. He also wore a mask."

"That was your father. He was a knight as well. He had taken his vows at Ren, as we all did. He died trying to protect you."

"From what?" Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper as it all sank in.

"From the Jedi. At least the part of them who believed that a child would rise and destroy the old order of things. My knights and I pledged to protect you. So you see, you don't need to worry that I will harm you. Jedi assassins were sent to kill you. They killed your father instead. We killed the assassins. So Ren became the graveyard of your father, too."

"And my mother?"

"She died shortly after."

Sadness welled up inside her, threatening her composure. She tamped it down fiercely. Still, tears sparkled in her eyes. She blinked them back, refusing to be vulnerable before him.

"I think that somewhere inside I must have known all along," she said very softly to herself, then looked up. "If all that you say is true, why do you continue to keep me prisoner?"

"I told you. I have pledged to keep you safe."

"While you have also pledged your allegiance to the dark side?"

He did not answer her.

"I will  _never_  ally with you," she informed him, meaning it. "I wish that I- I wish that you had left me where I was."

"Are you not more comfortable here than on that godforsaken planet of dust and sand? It could not have been more than a form of living death for you."

"I was only there because I was taken there."

"Yes, I chose one of my knights to take you far away so that even I would not know where you were. It was the only way."

"I was abandoned there. I was alone. That I survived at all is a miracle."

"But the fact remains that I saved your life. Can you not at least pretend to be grateful?"

"Grateful!" She almost laughed aloud. "To Kylo Ren for banishing me to a desert prison and then keeping me as his prisoner once again? And if I tell you that your protection is something abhorrent to me, then what?"

One corner of his mouth drew back into a coldly savage smile. "Then so be it. But whether the legend is true or not, people will continue to try and interpret it and some will be afraid of you. Those that want to hold onto their power will want to destroy you so there can be no chance of you rising against them. Whether you want it or not, the force _is_  strong within you. You have depths that even I cannot penetrate," he admitted. "Which means that you will be in danger wherever you go. For now, being with me is the safest place you can be. Here in my quarters."

He saw the shocked look in her eyes. She looked around, obviously only now realizing it  _was_  his quarters.

In spite of himself, while she was not looking, his gaze travelled down her womanly curves, from the soft and tempting swell of her breasts, down to the slenderness of her waist and the seductive curve of her hips. His body reacted as he became suddenly, fully aware of her as a woman. A very desirable woman. A woman whose beauty he found almost intoxicating. All his senses became perfectly attuned to her in a way he could not have anticipated. He experienced an almost overwhelming desire to feel the soft warmth of her beneath him, to drive into her and ease the ache in his loins. His hunger for her was so powerful that it had taken him completely by surprise. And yet he knew he needed to get control of it.

He was able to tear his gaze away from her, but unknown to him a telltale heat lingered in his eyes as she looked back at him.

As Rey turned back to the man, the blood mounted to her face. She had not mistaken the raw male hunger in his dark eyes. This she understood instinctively.

He saw her reaction and understood it as well. In the next moment, with an iron will, the one he was so infamous for, he got a grip upon himself and put a wall up between them that nothing could penetrate.

"My destiny is  _not_  with you," she said willfully. "I won't let that happen."

"One tends to see one's own destiny, like one's own flaws, through the darkest window."

"And is that how you see your own flaws and your own past?" she dared to ask, remembering that brief glimpse that she'd had of  _his_  thoughts.

"My past strengthened me, even though I have no desire to go back there. And I shall make my own destiny. Just as you must face your own past, Rey." He did not miss the way she flinched or how her eyes flashed when he used her name so familiarly. Was it outrage he had seen? Or was it something else? "And through that your future," he finished without taking his eyes from her face.

"As long as I do not go beyond the length of my tether, you mean. As long as I let you keep me in a cage. I will die first before I ally with you," she vowed.

He blinked once, called back unexpectedly to a time when he had said similar words with just as much passion.

Rey saw the cold, steady gleam in his eyes darken dangerously. She was aware of the raw power of his presence that made him the ruthless tyrant that he was. And yet a change had come over his face. It was something subtle, something just beneath the surface. Without understanding what it was, the change had a profound effect on her.

He paused for the space of several heartbeats before he said coldly, "Something has brought you to me again, and I want to know why. So, for the time being you will remain here, as my guest."

"You mean as your prisoner," she breathed in terrible awe as she felt the full force of him focused on her. Yet she silently defied him, even then.

"If you choose to look at it that way, then yes, you are my prisoner."

"What do we do now?" she asked, almost afraid to know.

"We go back to Ren."


	5. Chapter 5

"Why have you brought me here?" Rey asked.

The wind tossed several strands of Kylo Ren's dark hair against his cheek as he stood on a stone wall looking out over the wild and rugged landscape far below him. He seemed a tragic figure of lore with the backdrop of the ancient, mottled stones and the seething grey clouds beyond him. The brooding scenery was a perfect match for his dark temperament. He was suited to this place, as if he was lord here.

There was a storm gathering over the water in the distance. Blue-green forks of lightning flashed vividly above a dramatic landscape of black, jagged rocks and frothy waves that eddied and churned violently between the rocks and tumbled and foamed fretfully onto shore. And yet, though it was a forbidding landscape, it was an almost breathtakingly beautiful one.

The ancient castle of Ren itself was a place of mystery and legend. Almost always half buried in the wraithlike, restless mist that swirled about its foundation, some of the walls of the castle were intact. Other, older walls had crumbled into piles of rubble over the centuries. The primordial forest that surrounded the castle was ever-encroaching. The faint, ragged tracery of the trees could be seen through the pervasive shroud of mist that seemed intent on keeping the castle's secrets hidden.

Restless as a lost soul, the wind mourned continuously through cracks and openings in the desolate castle walls. Flocks of resident ravens rising on the wings of night added to the haunted atmosphere. In truth, of the rare visitors to the castle, there were few who would say with a certainty that there were not ghosts in the Castle of Ren.

Kylo Ren's heavy black cape was thrown negligently back over one shoulder. Without turning, he replied, "I brought you here so you might bring your past and your present together and reconcile with them both."

"And what of your deeper motives?"

Something dark flashed in his eyes as he turned his face to gaze down at her, but he did not answer her question. The coldness of her manner towards him had not changed. Nor had her sarcasm lessened. Nor her unrelenting rebellion against captivity. But she was right. He had deeper motives on many different levels, motives he chose not to put into words, but he owed her no explanations.

Rey had awakened to the sound of birds that morning. They made their nests in myriad crevices of the highest walls of the abandoned castle. She realized how much she had missed hearing the birds all those years at Jakku. The entire planet had been adust and dried up with heat. The rare birds that were able to survive there were not songbirds but huge, vicious birds of prey. Ren was so much more beautiful than Jakku. How she had let so much beauty fade from her memory she did not know.

"You have left me mostly alone since we arrived here," she said as she stared up at the man's broad back and the long black hair that was softly teased by the wind. "Not that I am complaining about that," she added perversely. "It's just that one can't help but wonder what could keep you so occupied in such a desolate place."

"Occupied?" He echoed frowningly.

"Your face is unshaven and you look like you haven't slept at all. And you came here very late today. You must have something very pressing on your mind."

"You're right. I have been- occupied and I have had very little sleep. So you should know that my patience with your sarcasm may have worn a little thin."

"Thank you for the warning, my lord," she said quietly, the usual disdain evident in the very softness of her voice.

There was a humorless tightening at the corners of his mouth. He ignored her sarcasm, however, and said, "Despite my prolonged absence, I see that you have made use of the warmer clothes that I had brought to you. This is the rainy season here and it can get quite cold at night. Your other clothes were hardly- suitable."

She looked up at him, suspicious of the subtle dragging tone in his voice. "I can't help but wonder why you would be so considerate."

Did the woman really not realize how beautiful she was? How alluring? Her other clothes had been far too provocative, much too distracting. No doubt the other men had found them to be the same. And yet she seemed to be completely oblivious to her womanly charms. No doubt that was because she had been isolated so long on Jakku.

"It was hardly considerate," he returned in a harsher voice. "You forget my pledge. If you die from the elements, all my efforts have been wasted. Are you not more comfortable in those clothes?"

"I am not comfortable being beholden to you for every detail of my existence."

"Such pride," he sneered. "The pride of a princess."

She straightened at that. "Does it please you to mock me?"

"I assure you that I could think of other pursuits that would be far more pleasing to me."

She looked away from him for a moment. There had been a subtle change in his voice that she found strangely unsettling.

When she looked back at his bold profile, she reminded him, "I have already told you I won't serve you. No matter how considerate you may pretend to be."

His face turned sharply toward her. Something feral flashed in his eyes, compelling her to silence. His voice, when it came, had a dangerous, seething undertone to it. "Did I say I would give you a choice?"

There were times like this when she was not at all certain of her ability to deal with him. His mood could turn dark in a moment and the sudden savagery of his tone gave her little ease. She already knew that he was like a wild beast who was untamed and therefore could turn violent and unpredictable in a moment's time.

She was always wary and uncertain in his presence, but over these past few days she had also suffered an agony of remembering as her past came back to her in disjointed fragments and scattered pieces. In some ways it still felt like she was remembering a dream, something that wasn't quite real. And yet she knew that all he had told her about her past so far was true.

"Don't make me regret my actions," he said with a little less ferocity. "I am not being considerate. Be grateful and quit putting so much effort into trying to provoke me."

Why could she not leave well enough alone? She heard herself say, "Again the gratitude. Do you have such a hunger for adulation? Is that what makes you want to rule and conquer and force women into captivity?"

This time, she saw his back straighten and she held her breath for a moment. But apparently he wasn't going to let himself be baited. He sat down on the thick wall he had been standing upon and leaned back against the stones, stretching one booted leg out before him.

She was emboldened by his indifferent manner and dared to go a step further. "The fact is that I am still a prisoner here."

He nodded.

"Yet you don't have guards watching over me."

"There is nowhere you could go that I wouldn't find you. If you try to run away from me, you would find it difficult, maybe impossible, to survive out there on your own without food, water or shelter."

"And yet, despite such hardships, since I would be away from you it might be worth it."

Except for a shadow of a smile, his expression did not change. "Do you not remember what lives in those nearly impenetrable forests and marshes that you think would be preferable to me?"

In an instant, she remembered only too well. She had tried to run away once. When she had been a child. The memory came to her only now. He had found her and brought her back, starving and shivering with cold, and nearly terrified out of her mind from the slithering things that hid in those forests and marshes.

She looked aside for a long moment. "We're not alone. There are others here."

He confirmed that it was true with a nod.

"Your knights?"

"Yes."

"Ren is a powerful place for you." It was not a question. Somehow she knew it to be true.

"There is much knowledge here and many hidden secrets. I have already learned some of those secrets. Only by knowing the past, can we begin to understand the future. You discovered some of those secrets yourself," he added enigmatically, although he did not elaborate. "The natural elements here keep us safe. The rocks are rich with rare metals. It's what gives the rocks their iridescence. We're safe from any kind of tracking device, even the most advanced types. You already feel different here, don't you?"

She didn't answer him.

"You are trying to hide that from me, but I already know that the castle also brings your energy into focus."

She could not deny it. He was right.

"You may fight me every step of the way, but your training must begin here. There are many things that you don't yet know. I can help you learn to protect yourself."

"From you?"

A faint, wolfish smile made him look almost sinister in the fading light.

Surprisingly, he realized he would allow even that if it meant protecting her. But he didn't tell her that.

"We can uncover Ren's secrets together," he told her, watching her face carefully.

That was not going to happen, she told herself silently.

"And what if I- what if you decide that I am a threat to  _you_?" she asked cautiously.

"Then we shall spend a great deal of time warring with each other to find out that truth. But I assure you one of us will win."

"Does not a war mean that everyone loses?" she asked as she held his gaze.

When it came to brute strength and utter ruthlessness, how could she expect to win any battle against this man? She remembered how he had reached down into the depths of her mind and already learned some of her secrets. She had been worried about what would happen if he should do that to her again. Would she be able to fight him this time? Would she win?

"How much have you remembered?" he asked abruptly. "Everything?"

"I'm not sure. If my mind is still hiding something, then I suppose it will be revealed to me in time."

"There are things that you are seeing that may not have happened yet," he said as he considered her with narrowed, contemplative eyes.

She was truly strong in the force if she had such vision. But he had sensed that in her already. He could not read her visions of the future, of course. If they were hazy to her, they would only be moreso to him.

"It's difficult to clearly grasp memories that happened so long ago," she admitted to him. "It seems like a lifetime has passed since I was brought here. Sometimes it feels as if it all happened to someone else."

He nodded. "We were different people then."

Even if he tried, he suspected he would not be able to probe her deepest thoughts. He still wondered how she had gotten so strong with no training, and how she could resist him on so many levels.

"I had a dog when I lived here," she said, the memory suddenly coming to her.

"I remember."

"He would surely not have survived alone for this long?" She was clearly afraid to hope, but there was a plaintive, hopeful look on her face in spite of the question. And her voice had a quaver in it, as if the memory was difficult for her even now.

"Surely not," he answered her.

She nodded.

"There would have been no one to take care of him," he said and amazingly he found himself immediately regretting his abrupt harshness. Even more astounding, he crumbled a little before the single tear that coursed down her cheek. For the first time in his adulthood he felt something that felt very much like compassion, an emotion that he thought had been driven out of him long ago. It was not a comfortable emotion for him to acknowledge, much less feel. And yet he was forced to face its existence, if only to himself. How was he to handle her when she could affect him this much? With such an ability, she  _could_  be a threat to him.

She hastily wiped away the tear. "It seems I am still remembering things," she said with a trace of irony. It was an attempt to cover up her own vulnerability, he knew, but her eyes remained haunted by shadows.

"You were only a child then," he told her. "You had few choices over your life, but you can change things now. If you let me teach you, you can learn to channel your pain into something else."

"As you have channeled your pain? And what will you teach me? How to help you conquer and terrorize? I do not want to be what you are. I am  _not_  what you are."

He had gotten to his feet again. And now he looked almost angry as he stood before her. He controlled the anger, but something dark flared in his eyes for a moment.

"Your powers have lain dormant all this time, yet look what you were able to do. You channeled your energy into that light saber with no training whatsoever. Does that not prove something to you about your destiny? I can teach you how to harness the power that is already within you. The power of the dark side drowns out the pain and the sadness. There is so much that I could teach you."

"I have no wish for a master."

"Sometimes we get one whether we wish it or not."

"But we still choose whether we will serve or not."

"Not always. Not if we wish to survive."

She faced him squarely. "And would that be enough for you? Servitude that is not honest, but forced? Slavery and false adulation?

"To make of life what  _I_  would have it be –  _there_  is freedom." She brought her hand to her chest to emphasize her words. "I should not like for someone to tell me what my choices should be or what my life should be like. I don't want to be a prisoner. I don't want to be obedient. I want to be  _me_. I want to decide for myself what is right." She continued to look straight at him. "I want to hold on to all that makes me feel alive inside and not have my dreams replaced by someone else's dreams. You are surprised, but, yes, I did dream. Even on Jakku. And  _you_ ," she went on with a little more passion now. "You are haunted and held by things that you feel, too. Moments of pure awareness that others pass by blindly. I feel it even moreso here." She swept her hand out to indicate the castle walls. "Yes, I even feel what is inside  _you_ more strongly since we have been here, from only that one single glimpse that I had. You let them believe they were stealing so much from you, when really it was so little, because you withheld so many surrenders. It's true, isn't it?"

She had sensed, when she had been in his mind for those brief moments, that behind his walls, behind the ruthlessness and the brutality and the hard, uncompromising exterior that he presented to the world, that there were gentler, more noble impulses. Things that might have ruled his life had he not been forced to hide them.

That she could reach so deeply inside him was troubling to him. He felt out of his element with her. She had the ability to storm his defenses as no one else had ever done.

Rey realized she had gone too far. She knew it by the look in his eyes. And yet she dared to ask, "It's true, isn't it, that you are interested in me merely because you think I might be useful to you in the future?"

"Before you suspect my motives, you might question the motives of the men who led you to me. You might find some of their intentions less than honorable, and far more troubling than mine."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you are so eager to trust anyone but me. Even strangers to you."

"You're Kylo Ren," she shot back. "Why would I trust you?"

"You shouldn't. But neither should you blindly trust others you barely know."

In spite of himself, his jealously flared, surprising him that it was even there.

"There are those who might view you as being useful, too, and you might not like to hear their motives put into words."

Her expression remained defiant. "Are you sure you're not judging others by yourself?"

His eyes had grown as dark and stormy as the sky behind him and he said in a voice that moved over her like distant thunder, "You will learn one day that letting someone get close to you can be a dangerous thing. But  _I_  will hold fast to my vow to protect you."

"For your own reasons," she reminded him. "Because it is advantageous to  _you_."

"Yes, I will keep you here on my own terms."

She scoffed and glared back at him. "At least you admit the truth. At least you are  _capable_  of honesty. What I find amazing is that you expect me to trust you and take you at your word, the word of Kylo Ren."

His mouth twisted. "You distrust me, yet your touching, blind faith in a traitor and a smuggler does not waver," he sneered. "Isn't it possible that there might have been more to their offers to help you than you realized?"

"Why are you twisting things? Why must you assume their motives were not innocent?"

"When does a guilty man  _not_  pretend that he is innocent?" His deep voice was full of scorn. "Deep down even you suspected the truth. Will you be truthful with me now?"

"What truth could I hide from you?" she asked, avoiding his direct gaze.

"You know as well as I do that evasions can sometimes be lies."

He was looking intently at her, making her feel if he could see past all her barriers.

He is only a man, Rey told herself. An infuriating man, a fearsome, formidable man, but he's just a man.

Her gaze lowered to the black shirt that was pressed against his body by the rising storm-wind. The contour of muscle there held her gaze, as did the slight rise and fall of his chest. The raw power of the man was boldly manifested before her in everything he said and did. But she realized something else, something much more disturbing. When had things changed between them?

He felt the change, too. He had to be careful. When sexual energy took over, it caused a disruption, even in the strongest will. That's why it was necessary for the cautions. And the reminders. That's why the Jedi did not allow for relationships. Or emotions. He recalled Snoke's warning: 'Seduce her, but guard your heart. Control her, not the other way around.' He was right. A man in a relationship would always struggle with his loyalties. Look how she disrupted him even now. With all this anger, with all these walls between them.

"A woman can always be a complication," he said, half to himself. "In your case- " His words trailed off and he left the rest unsaid, leaving her to guess at his meaning.

But she was waiting and he couldn't keep from finishing what he had begun. "In your case, your constant rebellion is even more vexing. You would never give a man peace. If a man was foolish enough to- "

It seemed she could not bear to hear the rest of his words. She interrupted him by saying, "I think we can agree that we do share something in common after all. We dislike each other very much. But just because you demand it of me, don't think I will willingly submit to you being my master. Not someone like you."

"I well know your hatred of me," he growled almost savagely. He had already been aware of that inside her. "That runs so deep, it is something you could never hide from me."

He laughed humorlessly under his breath, turned on his heels and stalked away from her, trying to gather what little remained of his composure.

That she looked at him as a monster he already knew. But that he should even care what she thought of him was astounding to him. There was something else he was aware of. She was a young woman with a young woman's dreams. There was hope of love in her. He had been very aware of that when he had probed her mind. But it was her dreams that had left such an impact upon him. They were strongly rooted in her, almost unshakable. Yet there was something else. Something he hadn't been able to completely penetrate. Something that had recently been stirred to life in her. It was just a spark, but he'd turned away from it the moment he had encountered it because he didn't want to know any more about it. He did not want her to think that  _his_  interest in her was anything but-

"And what do you hide?" he heard. There was a ragged edge to her voice that had not been there before.

He spun back around and froze.

"Are you trying to hide the fact that when you decide that I'm a threat to you," she said breathlessly. "You will also want to destroy me as you warned me that others will?"

He knew a moment of real, unfiltered fear before he managed to control it.

"What are you doing up here?" he asked hoarsely, afraid to startle her, afraid that she had decided on some extreme course of action to escape him.

She had climbed up on the stone wall and she was standing there like a wind-swept angel poised for flight.

"That well down there," she said, her words half carried by the wind. "If you throw a stone and get the stone in the water, your wish will come true. You told me this a long time ago."

"I also cautioned you not to stand up there."

Of course she didn't listen to him. Not then and not now. Would he expect anything different of her?

"You came upon me when I was crying one day," she went on. "And you told me- "

Even as she spoke the words, he was coming towards her with a quick, sure stride. He stepped lithely up onto the wall, pausing for a moment to look down to the well far below. "You believed many childish things then, but you should have outgrown them. Now come down with me."

There was a loud patter around them, the first heavy drops of rain. Her wind-blown hair was in wild disarray now. The hem of her dress was whipping about her ankles.

"Come down from here," he repeated in a lower voice.

She ignored his command and immediately felt a strong hand gripping her arm like a steel shackle.

"Let go of me."

But he didn't let go. He dragged her along with him as he stepped down from the wall.

"You should know that the stones can be treacherous. Especially when it is raining."

He looked very angry now and he was still holding her arm with a painful grip. She looked down at his hand and asked contemptuously, "You will also give me bruises to remember you by?"

He leaned closer to her while the rain drops splattered heavily down on them. "There will be no need to remember," he snarled. "Not as long as you are by my side."

Without warning, the rain suddenly fell in a hard, drenching downpour.

It was a cold rain and he immediately drew his heavy cape over her, holding it over her head. He kept one hand upon her arm and in a voice that brooked no argument, said, "Stay close to me."

He pulled her through an arched, stone doorway that opened into a narrow passageway. It was a dark and secluded place. Their hair and their clothes were already damp from the rain but it was dry here. Outside their shelter, the sound of the wind-driven rain grew louder.

"I was not expecting that," he said, raising his voice above the storm.

The space was small and they had no choice but to stand close to each other. His head was bent over hers, so close that she could feel his breath falling against her hair.

Turning her face away from him, she drew in a deep breath, but in doing so she became more aware of his subtle, but potent, masculine scent. Her composure faltered as his nearness affected her in a very physical way. She was too aware of him. Anywhere else seemed preferable as long as it was away from him, so she rashly tried to pass by him and go back out into the rain.

But he kept his hold on her arm and jerked her even closer to him.

"Does keeping me tethered tightly to your side make you feel better about yourself?" she asked a little wildly as she boldly stared up at him. Her emotions seemed to be rising to a sharp and jagged edge.

He laughed under his breath, "No, you contrive to disrupt my peace of mind every chance you get. You work hard at it."

She shook her head mutely, denying his accusations.

But he was relentless. "Everything you  _are_ disrupts me." His voice had lowered until it seemed so much more intimate in the small space, so much more perilous to  _her_  peace of mind.

Her nerves were already frayed, but now her heart was beating at a faster pace for some reason that she could not fathom. It pounded even harder when he leaned forward and braced his hands on the stone wall behind her.

She drew a sharp, startled breath and looked around desperately for an escape. She could feel the heat from his body seep through her own damp clothes. The subtle masculine scent that she found so disrupting before assailed her senses in a far more provocative, far more dangerous way. Her eyes closed. And now when she shivered it was not from the cold rain or her damp clothing.

"We can't stay here," she protested in a voice that was now laced with panic.

They were standing so close together that even without touching him, she was aware that his muscles were straining. She also sensed that he was fighting for control. Of her or of himself she didn't know. She didn't care. Her own unwanted response to his nearness dismayed her, terribly, but she was trying desperately to hold on to her own control. She was determined that he would not know how much he affected her.

"Rey." His voice had a warning in it, but it had lowered to a deep, almost sensual whisper. "Stop fighting me."

His face lowered even more until his mouth was a mere breath away from her own.

"We can't stay here," she repeated almost yielding to the panic that was threatening to consume her. She raised her hands, almost against her will, and placed them on his chest as if she could hold him off in that way. But she found even the steady thud of his heart beneath her palm disconcerting.

He leaned closer and asked softly, "What are you afraid of?"

There was a strange leap in her breast, a breathlessness that made her swallow hard. "What are you doing?"

She stiffened and gasped as he lowered his arms. Both of his hands circled her waist. His mouth hovered even nearer to hers, his breath falling upon her lips with each word that he spoke. "I think you already know what I'm doing."

His hands slid slowly downward, as if savoring every inch of her before they molded to her hips and dragged her body against his. The sudden, shocking sensation of the hard contours of his body pressed against the softness of her own took her breath away.

"And I have sensed something inside you- " he began, but he never finished his words. She gave a little cry as if his very words terrified her. With both hands she pushed hard against his chest. But she only felt the unyielding strength there and he proved the ruthlessness that he was so infamous for by not letting her go. He pressed his body even more intimately against hers.

"I'm drawn to you. And you are drawn to me," he whispered.

"No, you're wrong," she whispered back. But a strange, sharp thrill did course deeply through her body as his words continued their dark seduction.

"Am I? You might want to think of me as a monster, but when I hold you like this, you think of me as a man. Just as I think of you as a woman. You're trembling not only because of me, but because of  _you_."

She shook her head fiercely.

"We have a force bond, Rey. You know that's true. It frightens me, too, but we can't deny it happened."

She felt the rasp of his unshaven face against her tender flesh as he pressed very slow, very sensual kisses down along one side of her throat. She fought hard against the sensory onslaught, fought hard to keep her world from turning upside down. But she lost the battle when he gathered her to him and his mouth came down upon hers.

There was hunger in his kiss. That was the first thing she was aware of. But it was a hunger that he held in check. At first. The moving of his mouth over hers started out as a gentle, tentative testing, a slow tasting. And then the gentleness was gone and his kisses became ravening, devouring, demanding. And she was responding to his raw, savage hunger with her own wild abandon. An abandon she had never imagined existed.


	6. Chapter 6

Han Solo and Chewbacca had had a nasty little run in with storm troopers in a rough settlement on Argaran. But their luck had held out and they'd managed to escape with only some minor scrapes and bruises. They'd also been able to learn some important information about Rey's possible location. It had come from a smuggler named Jabari. There were rumors - there always were - about where Kylo Ren went when he wanted to isolate himself, where he went to be alone. As a consequence, nobody dared go there and take a chance of confronting him in his lair.

There was just the two of them again. After they'd reached Argaran, Finn had vanished without a trace. Whether he had gone into hiding or whether he had taken a transport out of there without telling them, they had no way of knowing.

"What do you mean what am I hiding?" Han asked.

He gave Chewbacca a furtive sidelong glance then narrowed his gaze at the prolonged sound that the Wookie made.

"Can I help it if you have a suspicious nature?" Han grumbled as he continued to stare straight ahead. "Why can't you just be happy that we got out of that pit of vipers in one piece?"

But Chewbacca had one final remark that Han mentally translated: "So this is where your greed has brought us?" the Wookie had commented with a fair amount of disgust.

Han let out a harsh, abrupt sigh and avoided looking at him again.

* * *

_Two days passed in which they had both managed_  to pretend that the kiss had never happened. The awkward silences, the evasive glances somehow turned into a tacit agreement that it would not be spoken of. Rey certainly wasn't going to mention it, even though she thought about it more times than she cared to admit. In fact, she was thinking about it now and she released yet another deep sigh.

It had rained earlier and the tree branches were dripping with occasional drops of moisture. There was not even a hint of breeze. The stillness was deep and the enveloping fog was even thicker than it usually was so the morning air felt damp and heavy in her lungs.

She straightened, brought abruptly back to the present as she watched Kylo Ren approach her from out of the mist. He looked like some dark demon emerging from the murky depths of hell. That was her involuntary thought as he drew nearer. The mask was on and she had to admit, if only to herself, that he looked fearsome with it on.

He took the mask off, however, as he came to a halt before her. His face was unreadable. His dark hair was tumbling carelessly about his face.

A slow flush of heat stole into her cheeks as her traitorous memory dragged up the kiss again. To cover her embarrassment, she said, "Why do you even bother coming to check on me? Can your knights not report back to you?"

That was a good question. He didn't know why he kept coming back here to personally check on her. It certainly wasn't for his peace of mind. She afforded him anything but that.

When he didn't answer her, Rey boldly articulated her thoughts. She knew the moment the words left her mouth that she should have left well enough alone, but something drove her.

"Is it true that you turn into a wolf when the moon is full?" she asked. "Or that you drink the blood of your victims after you have savagely tortured them?"

There was no change in his face as he said, "If everything you ever heard about me was true, I would have horns growing out of my head and fangs with which I would have devoured you by now."

"Then you are saying you're not the blood-thirsty fiend that they say you are?"

"Do I appear that way to you?"

"Maybe you're only waiting for a full moon."

Even after the outright insult, his face still betrayed no anger.

"Your determination to spar with me is plain this morning," he remarked, his gaze remaining steady as it held hers. Amazingly, it was her gaze that fell away first.

He was silent for a moment as he continued to unabashedly study her face. "I heard that you saw something last night. Something  _wolf-like_?" he queried, repeating her words.

"Yes, but it walked on two legs. It passed by very quickly in the shadows."

She had to suppress a shiver as she recalled it. It had caught her off guard.

"And you thought it was  _me_. I assure you, it was not."

"Are there such creatures here on Ren?"

"None that I have ever seen," he answered her. "Nor heard of. And I have  _sensed_  nothing here like that."

Still, his dark brows drew together in a frown. Was it possible he had been so distracted that he had not been aware of the existence of such a threat?

"Perhaps it was a vision?" he suggested, his frown deepening.

"I don't think so. It seemed very real."

"And you only saw it once?"

She nodded.

"I have made sure that there will be guards around your quarters at all times. Perhaps you are ready now to begin the rudiments of learning how to use a light saber to protect yourself."

She had relented. He could see that in the expression on her face. It was entirely possible that she had ulterior motives, like eventually using her skill to escape him. But he wasn't going to let that happen.

"Then we will begin your first lesson this afternoon. And don't think that because you're a woman, I will be easy on you," he added.

The thought hadn't even crossed her mind.

* * *

_The lesson was long and it was grueling_. But Rey took to it like a bird takes to flight, finally earning praise from Kylo Ren himself who was a severe and exacting master.

Concentrating on the lesson was easy. It was the only way to work out the strange sensual excitement, the odd shiver of pleasure that pulsed deep inside her whenever he was close. He was handsome, ruthlessly, darkly handsome. And that was a distraction when it shouldn't be one. And, of course, there was the memory of the kiss that would come bubbling up to the surface with no warning at all. In fact, it caused such a disruption inside her that she had to work hard to keep that from happening.

"Give in to the darkness," he said, his gaze unwavering as he looked down into her eyes. "That which you fear the most can become your greatest strength."

"That which  _you_  feared the most must have been very strong to have taken such a deeply-rooted hold in you," she countered. "It makes you feel the need to conquer entire worlds."

In spite of her taunts, he remained provokingly unruffled. "Things must change," he said. "Otherwise this war that tears the galaxy apart will never cease. There are thousands of years of history that prove I am right."

"There are thousands of years of history that prove that evil will rise up and gain a foothold wherever it can. Is it that you want power so that you can treat everyone else as you treat me?" she questioned.

"And how do I treat you?"

"Like I am an object, devoid of feelings and emotions,  _and_  rights, devoid of any humanness, dignity or choice. Devoid of soul. You expect me to be content under your ruthless power. That is what you demand of me. And  _that_ \- " she finished breathlessly. "Is why I am silently screaming inside. That is why I will continue to fight you."

"You forget, I could have easily destroyed you," he reminded her.

"Controlling me  _is_  destroying me."

He stopped and now he stood there frowning. It seemed he hesitated a moment. And that was not like him. He was looking at her intently. "You fight so hard."

"What would you have me do?" she whispered. "Or be? Only a reflection of your desires? My will, my innocence is something you can't take from me. No matter how hard you try. Even if you do manage to destroy me, I will still choose not be a prisoner to the lies of the darkness. To  _you_. There is something deeper, better, more true."

He realized in that moment that she retained something rare, an unwavering idealism. And perhaps with it, the very essence of innocence. And he was drawn to it, perhaps, in part because of his own lost innocence.

"I may have wounds. Many of them," she went on. "But my triumph, my victory is that I will survive retaining the original essence of who I am. Not as a vengeful, angry spirit that someone has turned me into, not as a slave to the darkness. I can choose to be a light in the darkness. And what of you? Can you learn to ease the wounds that sin carved out and stop carrying the burden of other's sins? Or will you stay imprisoned in the dungeon of your mind? It will be your downfall, you know. If you cannot control it, it will control you."

He did not know what to say to her. He could think of absolutely nothing to say.

"This force bond, is it a forever thing?" she asked, finally putting into words the question that had been preying on her mind.

"Yes, it can't be broken. Not even by death," he answered her.

"How is that possible?"

"The one left alive will always remember, will always feel the loss."

"Loss?" she echoed, scoffing slightly. "Doesn't it occur to you that I might look on that as freedom?"

He gave her a rather feral smile. "You will never be free of me, Rey."

"But that only means that I will haunt you as well, Kylo Ren."

* * *

_Why was he looking so mysterious?_  So secretive, like he was hiding something from her.

Rey looked around. Was there another threat out there? Had that wolf creature she had seen come back-

"Did you see something?" she asked with alarm as she got abruptly to her feet.

He shook his head very soberly while his gaze held hers. Without a word, he opened up his cape. Shivering under the black folds of material, looking at her with wide, familiar eyes, was a tiny matted dog.

"Saffi," she cried out, rushing forward before she remembered to control herself. She quickly drew the hand back that had been reaching out.

"It seems my knights have been feeding him."

When he handed the dog to her, his hand brushed hers. For some unaccountable reason, the light grazing of flesh made him feel like he had been scorched by fire, like he had been branded.

Does it make me seem less gruesome to her? he wondered as he watched her unbridled reaction as she laughed with unrestrained happiness beneath an onslaught of boisterous dog kisses.

"I think he has been waiting for you to come back all this time." He quickly sobered when he realized there was a smile on his own face as he stood there watching the joyous reunion.

"Why would Kylo Ren be so kind to me?" he heard.

He was on the verge of answering her when he realized that he would be answering her thoughts. She hadn't spoken the question out loud.

That disturbed him. Were thoughts and emotions flowing so freely between them? Was the bond stronger than he had realized?

"You'll have to take care of him now," she heard.

As a packet thudded on the ground in front of her, Rey looked up and was barely able to manage a nod. Something terrible had tightened in her chest. They were not touching in any way – they were not even looking at each other - yet somehow she was so close to him she ached from it.


	7. Chapter 7

It had finally stopped raining. The fog drifted slowly around her, enveloping her like a silent, concealing veil. Occasionally the fog would open up in small places like a tattered cloth and allow her a glimpse of the water in the distance and the rocky shore. But then it would all disappear again behind the wraithlike layers of mist.

Kylo Ren never came at this hour of the day, so Rey felt perfectly safe being outside the castle as she reached down and plucked the vibrant purple flowers from between the rocks at her feet. It hadn't taken her long to remember all the hidden places, all the secret passages in and out of the castle that she had learned about when she had been here as a child. There had been no flowers on Jakku. But she seemed to remember-

She held the deep purple flowers to her face, knowing somehow that they would have a sweet scent. They did and she found it almost intoxicating as a wave of intense, childhood memory washed over her.

She looked up suddenly. There was a flash of the strange blue-green lightning that was so common in this place. It was followed by a faint, faraway growl of thunder. She sighed heavily as she realized that yet another storm was building in the distance. Would the rain never end? Darkness was falling early because of the storm clouds. The shadowy outline of the forest was already muted by the curtain of mist. It was time for her to go back, before she got lost in the mist and the darkness. It would not be hard to get turned around completely.

She had not brought Saffi with her because she had been afraid that he would have barked and given her away. As she walked, she realized full well that she had been drawn outside the castle in part because of the sense of freedom that it afforded her. Of course it was only a momentary freedom, but she couldn't help a small smile from curving her lips. She had secretly defied Kylo Ren and that was a victory of sorts for her. She had managed to find a moment of freedom from his strict rules and restrictions. From his absolute power over her. Somehow that was important to her.

But as she walked, her smile faded. There was no other sound out in the fog-shrouded landscape other than her own footsteps, and yet instinctively she began to sense that she was no longer alone. Uneasiness soon turned to alarm.

She suddenly froze, realizing in an instant how foolish she had been to have wandered so far. Had she brought Saffi with her, he might have warned her of the presence of any dangers. But now, as she listened, she became even more convinced that something was out there in the fog, watching her, stalking her.

Even before she turned around, she knew she was not alone. When she finally did manage to force herself to slowly turn, what she saw before her made her heart leap into her throat.

The wolf-like form was a darker shadow amidst the drifting layers of pale grey mist. It rose up before her on two legs, with eyes glittering and teeth bared.

She didn't dare move. Her gaze remained fixed on the beast with a dread terror pounding in her chest.

She could hear the beast's steady breathing. She could see the rise and fall of its furred chest. She even imagined that as those feral eyes moved slowly down her body, they were filled with a savagery and a wanton hunger that was beyond terrifying.

And the scene remained frozen. Only a vagrant breeze moved several strands her loose hair. She still held the purple flowers in her hand, but she was now clutching them tightly against her chest. She swallowed hard, expecting the beast to leap upon her at any moment and tear her to shreds.

But another figure appeared in the mist.

Kylo Ren.

Rey had never imagined that she would be glad to see him. But she was. She was so relieved, in fact, that she suddenly felt weak with relief.

The wolf creature turned its face and stared at Kylo Ren with a cold, bestial hostility that was unmistakable. She heard a low, almost imperceptible growl from its throat. But Rey was also able to discern a shadow of uncertainty in its eyes now.

Her tense gaze moved from Kylo Ren to the wolf beast and back again. She saw what she could swear was slyness in the silvery glitter of the beast's eyes. She saw its lips move. It spoke with a snarl in his voice, something she could not understand.

Kylo Ren answered in the same strange speech.

The beast spoke again and breathed out a slow, rasping breath. Something she imagined was a threat.

"She's not for sale," she heard Kylo Ren say with a steely, dangerous undertone in his words. And then he must have repeated it in the beast's strange, growling dialect. He then took a single step forward and the creature backed down, half cowering in submission, but obviously not completely subdued.

"Touch me," she heard Kylo Ren say.

"Huh?"

"Touch me so that he knows you have chosen me as your mate. Otherwise he'll keep thinking he can win you from me."

"Where should I touch you?"

"It doesn't matter. Anywhere. He must see proof of the bond between us."

She stepped forward and with her hands, circled his upper arm. She felt the rock-hard swell of muscle there. Without conscious thought, she leaned against him.

"Not that close," he said tightly and she drew back.

"But you- " she whispered.

"Quit talking," he said under his breath, but all his attention remained on the beast before him. There was a terrible tension hovering in the air. A tension Rey could almost feel. She expected something to happen, some violence as the two faced each other. But nothing happened and eventually the beast backed away, slowly vanishing into the fog.

Kylo Ren waited only a few tense seconds. Then he grabbed her arm and began to drag her along with him. He was obviously furious - with her - and she became truly afraid.

When they were safely back inside the castle, he finally turned to her. "Do you have any idea how foolish you were to go out there alone?"

When she did not answer him, he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a shake to emphasize his words. "Do you realize you could be dead, or worse, right now if I hadn't found you when I did?"

She struggled for words to defend herself. Of course there were none that could justify her actions and she was still too shaken up by the whole terrifying encounter, so she remained silent.

He let go of her abruptly, but he paced angrily before her a few times, then faced her again, towering over her with clenched fists at his sides. "You are never to leave this castle by yourself again. Do you understand me?"

He didn't really have to tell her that, because after today, after what had just happened, she was never going to do that again. Never.

"Where's the dog?" he wanted to know.

"I left him behind."

"I suppose that was his good fortune. He would have probably died trying to protect you. That Akth'ral would have torn him to shreds, not to mention the bite and the blood of an Akth'ral is poisonous. That's why I did not kill him outright. If the blood had gotten on you, you would have died an agonizing death in mere moments. Killing an Akth'ral can be messy. They're venomous and they tend to thrash around violently for a long time before they die. They spray everywhere."

He had meant to frighten her. Was she afraid? Maybe a little, but not enough. Not nearly enough. She stood there rubbing her wrist, looking more outraged than anything else.

"You seem to forget that you're a prisoner, which means that you are confined to this castle."

"Why don't you just put bars around me? Or paralyze me with your mind again?"

He gave her a dark, sidelong glance. "Don't tempt me," he warned.

It was time to frighten her a little more.

"That Akth'ral was hunting you."

"Hunting me?" She had the impression that he had more to say, but she didn't think she wanted to hear whatever it was. It was all catching up with her, how much danger she had been in and what could have happened. She shuddered when she thought of how close she had come to providing a meal for that savage-looking beast.

"You don't understand. He was hunting  _you_  specifically."

No, she didn't understand at all what he was trying to say.

"What would he want with me?"

"The usual," he replied tightly and then growled, "Don't think it's because you're so irresistible. He wanted you for your blood line."

She looked confused for a moment, sensed that there was something he was not telling her. "What bloodline?" she asked.

"An Akth'ral is a cross between a wolf, a human and- You don't want to know. They escaped from a laboratory and colonized a planet not far from here. Because of their background, they are obsessed with breeding and genetics. They know who you are. They would have bred you."

He had finally managed to frighten her. Her face had grown several shades paler. But she was still trying to hide her fear from him, still trying to put on a brave front.

"Well, that- that didn't happen."

"No, but it  _could_  have happened." His gaze grew hard as he continued to stare down at her. "And it tells me that others know of your existence here.

"You need to understand something else. He'll come back again. Akth'rals are vicious killers with a decided taste for blood. Among other things. And seeing you has only unleashed its hunger."

"It's still out there?"

"Not for long," he said with an ominous undertone. "The hunter has already become the hunted."

His gaze dropped to her lips, lingered there, and she became afraid, afraid that if their emotions flared, another kiss could happen spontaneously. Even if neither one of them wanted it. Maybe he was afraid of that, too, because he took a step backward as if he was putting up some kind of invisible, impenetrable barrier between them.

"It's time to have a talk," he said.

"About what?"

"About your past."


	8. Chapter 8

He ran his hands over his eyes and then shoved his wind-swept hair back from his face. Had he gotten through to her about the dangers out there? He didn't know. All he did know was that she was driving him crazy. So it was not until the next day that he approached her again.

He was standing with his back to her when he heard, "I wondered when I would be graced with your presence again, my lord."

He slowly turned and stared at her for a moment.

She had honed her sarcasm to a very sharp-edged blade. At least with him.

He leaned over and picked up a small smooth stone. "Make your wish."

She looked at the stone in his hand, closed her eyes in silent concentration for a few moments and then opened them again.

"Made?" he asked.

She gave a faint nod.

He turned and with a sharp, sure swing of his arm, threw the stone. She had to lean forward to see it land in the center of the water far below. They were too far to hear the splash, but it definitely landed in the dead center of the well and vanished.

"Don't you want to know what my wish was?" she asked, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at him.

He shook his head. "No. That's not the way with wishes."

"You're not curious at all?"

"If I wanted to know what you wished for, I could read your mind and find it out."

"But you won't do that," she said, watching him guardedly from beneath her lashes now.

He looked to the side for one brief moment. "No, I won't do that." He looked back at her and regarded her with a face that showed no emotion. "I will assume that you wished for your freedom."

Something had changed between them. She knew this. He knew it, too, because he did not feel comfortable forcing his way into her thoughts as he had done before. Maybe it was in part because if she should get inside  _his_  mind as she had done before, she might see more than he wanted her to see.

"You were going to tell me about my past," she reminded him.

"Yes, it is something we must talk about."

"Did you know who my parents were?"

He nodded and asked, "Do you have no recollection of them at all?"

"I barely remember my mother. Even her face is a blur to me."

He should have been able to tap into those basic memories, even as dim as they were. He did not know why he had not been able to do so.

"As for my father," she began, then caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "I- I- it seems too painful to recall somehow."

"You still feel the loss very deeply?" he asked, watching her face closely.

"Wouldn't anyone be affected by such a loss? A child's emotions are instinctive and very deeply rooted. They remain a part of who we are, I would think."

"All true."

She stared out beyond the castle walls. "I thought that my dreams might eventually reveal more of my past to me, but there is still so much that remains maddeningly elusive." She looked back at him and searched his face. "Are you going to tell me what you know?"

"What I know is that the massacre here at Ren happened several generations ago when the castle was overrun by the Ashatae," he began. "The Ashatae were ruthless warriors, a very savage people. They swept through this part of the galaxy with a merciless, scorched-earth policy that spared very few."

"Very much like what is happening today in other places," she commented quietly.

He ignored her obvious reference to him and continued. "The Ashatae would suddenly appear out of nowhere like an unstoppable tide, pillaging and slaughtering wherever they went. Agreements and alliances meant nothing to them. Life meant nothing. Anyone who resisted, and many who did not, were killed. Survivors were hunted down in the forests. But there were some who were taken as slaves. One of them was the Queen of Ren."

He watched as she silently repeated his last words.

"On some of the walls of the castle you have seen what are called talking stones because they have writing on them," he went on. "You don't know the language so you are not able to read what is written there, but they speak to you, don't they?"

"Maybe in my dreams . . . " her voice trailed off.

"What have you been seeing in your dreams?" he asked.

"I see- terrible hurts. Things I do not want to look at. In one very frightening dream I was looking down a long corridor into a dark room. Ghosts were in there. They seemed like the living dead and they were trying to tell me something. They left messages on the stones. But the dream faded as I realized that there were too many hollows in the darkness, too many places to get lost in . . . "

She bowed her head, sadness washing over her.

"You are sad when you think of this?"

"I can't help but be sad."

He sighed. "You were sad then, too. You understood so much at such a young age. Too much, perhaps. You were able to tap into the last hours of the people who lived here. Those are the stories that the stones tell."

For a moment, the briefest of moments, she almost felt her past  _through_  him. She shook herself mentally, not understanding what was happening to her, afraid of getting too close to him emotionally. She wasn't looking at him, but she felt him glance sharply at her. Whether he had become aware of that very unnerving threat of closeness, she did not know. She crossed her arms over her chest and took a few steps away from him, not knowing what else to do to distance herself from him.

Turning back, she asked, "What reason did my parents have for bringing me here?"

"To keep you safe. To keep you hidden. For the most part at least."

His answer confused her. The hint of bitterness in his tone was even more confusing. "Hidden from what?"

"Your mother was the daughter of Ren's captured queen." He waited while she absorbed that stunning information. "And your mother's father was- " he hesitated a moment. "A Sith."

"A- Sith?"

"Yes, your grandfather was a Sith. He had rescued your grandmother, Ren's queen, from captivity."

"As I told you before, your father was one of the Knights of Ren. He was the one who decided to bring you here. It was your mother that- Let's just say that she didn't possess the strongest maternal instincts."

"What exactly does that mean?"

"It means that she was perfectly content to abandon you here. And later she betrayed you for her own personal gain. Some might say it was because of her Sith blood. It ran strong in her."

"And my father?"

"He was nothing like her. He came back for you. He died fighting to protect you."

It was a lot for her to process. If she could even believe him. Somehow, however, she knew that he was telling her the truth.

"Then I was not safe here after all," she said.

"For a long time you were. Years." He breathed a low laugh under his breath. "It was like your own personal castle back then. No one knows this place like you do. You knew how to get in and out of the smallest, most hidden places. You could be frustrating to no end because you quickly learned how to disregard the rules."

"Your rules?"

"Yes, my rules. And you are still disregarding them."

"Why were we both here?"

"Fate, Rey. Is that not what always brings people together?"

It was a cryptic reply, one that told her nothing.

She did not bother to hide her frustration. "I want answers from you. Not more questions."

"And you shall have them. But there is a lot to tell and you will have to learn patience. You will have to learn many more things. As I told you, the Castle of Ren has many secrets."

He pointed to a wall that towered high above their heads. "You see that rock with an opening in it? At this time of the year when the sun sets, for a brief period of time its last rays go through that rock and shine on the wall beyond it. There is a blood-red crystal set in that stone. When the light hits the crystal, the light fractures and creates an image on the wall."

"An image of what?"

"You'll have to wait and see when the sun sets."

"Must we always play by your rules and by your personal schedule?"

"If I must maintain my dominance over you, then we must."

There was sternness in his deep voice, but she detected a faint glint of humor in his eyes. A smile, almost. The first genuine one she had seen from him. The smile didn't last long, however. It faded as he admitted, "I don't know what the image is. I was hoping you could tell me. Whatever it is, it has great significance."

It was true that Rey brought up something that he had thought was long dead inside him. He had fought it from the beginning, of course, by being intentionally cruel to keep her at a distance. But he could not seem to be able to summon up cruel at the moment. She had power to pull him from himself and she was demonstrating that over and over again. How much easier things would be if they could work together.

"Can we not agree to a truce, at least temporarily?" he asked her.

"If I did not already know that truces for some people are merely traps, I might be able to agree to one," she countered.

"You're wise to be cautious. It's very true that truces, and even kindness, can be traps."

"But you're telling me not to expect treachery from  _you_?"

"If I gave you my word that I am being sincere, would you believe me?"

"The word of Kylo Ren?"

He laughed outright at the mistrust in her voice. Silently, he admitted to himself that sparring with her gave him too much pleasure. Far too much pleasure.

As for Rey, she found that his unexpected laugh was a deep, honest sound that affected her more than it should. She steeled herself against it.

"I believe that you have learned secrets here that I do not know," he confessed.

"Ah, so I have something you want."

"I admit that freely," he said. "But I think that I have also piqued your curiosity."

"Why should I decide to help you?"

"Did I say you had a choice?"

She drew a slow, deep breath. Just when she would begin to relax with him a little, he would remind her of all the reasons why she must remain wary of him. But the expression on his face told her that he was only half serious.

"Would you tease anyone else this way?" she asked.

"No," he replied very soberly. "No one else. But what makes you think I am teasing you?"

He dragged his gaze away from her and looked to the wall far above them.

"The talking stones up there bear a strange code, one that I have not been able to decipher yet."

"Maybe it is something we are not meant to understand. Maybe it is connected to something evil."

"Do we not have to look into the face of evil to truly understand it?"

"Understand it, or control it?" she dared to ask.

"The galaxy has been torn apart by opposing forces for millennia. Is it not time for a strong hand to bring back the rule of law?"

"The rule of law?" she echoed. "Is that what you are calling it? Is it not possible that being close to evil puts one at risk of being controlled by it?"

He was slower to turn this time.

"I won't be a part of putting more power in your hands," she told him. "I know that you want to fulfill the legacy of Darth Vader and destroy the last remnants of the Jedi. But don't expect me to help you with such a wicked plan."

* * *

_"A rogue Kylo Ren is a very dangerous thing."_

A long silence followed those sobering words. Spoken out loud, they seemed to hold more power than when they were mere thoughts.

"Can we take a chance that he has his own agenda which may prove to be very different from our own?"

There was no need to answer. Both men knew that they could not risk even the smallest chance of that happening.

Finally, one of them said, "You know what must be done. I want the woman brought before me. But be very careful," Snoke admonished in his croaking voice. "You will be going into his own personal lair. Even I do not know the power he may have there. Especially if she is with him."


	9. Chapter 9

"You try my patience," he informed her.

But Kylo Ren didn't sound impatient at all.

"Why don't you make a wish for a more obedient captive then?" Rey asked him as she glanced briefly in the direction of the well.

She looked back at him in time to see one corner of his mouth twitch into a fleeting semblance of a smile. An almost smile. But it didn't last. He instantly sobered and his usual stern, dark look was back. "Believe me," he said, low-voiced. "If I thought it would work, I would try it."

"With all your great power," she said with an exaggerated sigh. "I'm surprised that you cannot impose your will upon me and  _make_  me obey you." He did not fail to note the edge of sarcasm threaded through her words.

"If only it were that easy," he said. "It would save me a great deal of frustration and annoyance. Now," he began in a still-patient tone. "Take the saber from me again."

"How many times must we practice this?" she asked.

"Until you can do it with ease. Until it becomes second nature to you. In a life-and-death situation, you do not have time to analyze things."

She held out her hand and the light saber was immediately and smoothly transferred from his hand to hers. Even he looked surprised at the ease with which she accomplished it this time.

"You're improving very quickly. Finally," he added.

She looked at him and tilted her head slightly to one side. "Aren't you afraid I will use my new abilities against you?"

"I have allowed my mind to be aware of such intention." This time he smiled openly but there was a trace of dark wickedness in the smile. "Without a doubt, I would anticipate you before you could do so. Besides, you have no such power yet."

"Yet?" she echoed and then looked thoughtful, as if the very idea intrigued her.

"You do have Sith blood in your veins," he reminded her. "Who can say how treacherous you could become."

He was making fun of her. Maybe.

"Surely not more treacherous than you," she countered. "I imagine that if anyone should understand treachery, it would be you."

He ignored the bold insult and said, "Go over the maneuvers I have just taught you."

"Again?"

"Again."

She sighed, but she executed the maneuvers flawlessly.

"Does that please you?"

Please him? His spontaneous thought was that there were many, many other ways in which she could please him. Of course he did not say this to her.

He frowned and shifted his thoughts, but not without some effort. "Someone taught you how to fight. Maybe some devoted suitor on Jakku?"

She laughed outright at that. "On Jakku? My choices in suitors was extremely limited."

Yes, he thought to himself. They would have been limited, but they would have sought her out had they known of her presence. She would draw any man. Just as she drew him.

He had had his knights acquire a wardrobe for her from different sources. She wore the new clothes readily now. She had refused to do so in the beginning, vowing that she would not take a single scrap of cloth from him. In the end, however, practicality won out.

The dress she had on now was enough to take his breath away. The moment he saw her, he had stopped in his tracks and had to regroup before he could approach her. The soft violet gown was perfectly fitted to her form. It clung to her curves in a very distracting way. But there were loose, flowing veils from her sleeves and from the skirt. The slight wind would catch these now and then making her look more like an Azulre temptress than his student. Yet she seemed completely oblivious to the captivating picture she presented to him.

"How many other women have you devoted so much time to instructing in the art of war games?" she asked.

"None. Only you."

He held his hand up automatically to draw the light saber back from her, as he always did at the end of their lessons. This time, she did not fight the strange tingling sensation this caused in her. In fact, she found the sensation almost compelling now as it ran like a soft current through her body, bringing her very nerve endings to life.

"Let's end this lesson. 'Tis almost sunset," he said, slipping into the old dialogue as he sometimes did.

He had wanted her to look at the wall through the prism at sunset, and now he led her in that direction.

When they stopped, she stood looking up at the wall. "I remember now," she said suddenly as it all came back to her. "Come through here."

He followed her through a low stone arch. While she fit easily through the small opening, he had to bow his head as they passed through it.

"We have to go out there," she told him as she pointed to a small ledge that was overhanging a perilous-looking drop-off.

"On that little ledge?"

"Yes, you're not afraid, are you?" She sounded almost challenging.

"No. Do you forget that I have spent as much time here as you have?"

When they were standing on the ledge, she said to him, "We have to lie down."

"There's barely enough room to do that."

"Well, yes, for two adults it is. But if you lie close to me, it can be done. When you do, I'll show you what you didn't see before."

He stared at her for a moment, helplessly envisioning all the images that her words implied, then, disciplining himself against any further imaginings, he followed her example and stretched his long, powerful body out beside her.

He stared up at the familiar design of refracted light on the wall. It seemed no different than it had appeared a hundred other times from many different angles.

"Here," she said. "Sometimes we have to adjust how we look at things to see what is right before our eyes. Hold this." She had raised her arm and now she had him hold one edge of one of the trailing veils from her sleeve. "Look through the filter of the veil. Do you see what it is now?"

Not at first he didn't. But when he squinted and stared harder, he saw a dragon begin to take shape. A ferocious dragon that was breathing fire and smoke. It became so clear that he wondered that he had not seen it before.

He turned his face and stared at her for a moment.

"They call you the dragon sometimes," she said quietly as she stared back at him. She looked away from him and again contemplated the dragon herself. "I had time enough to daydream by myself when I was here as a child." A small smile touched her mouth. "You didn't know that sometimes when you were looking for me, I would be here hiding from you. Not once were you able to find me."

He was lying very close to her to see through the veil. He could feel the warmth of her body. He could feel her very nearness like it was a tangible touch. It was a distraction. A dangerous one. But he fought it. She must have been aware of something, too. Because he could sense her stiffen and she grew silent.

By sheer strength of will, he forced himself to refocus on the image of the dragon.

"You know where we must go now," he heard her say.

He did know. The constellations were carved in stone in various places on the walls on this level of the castle. They corresponded to the constellations at certain times of the year.

They climbed back through the arch and went to the stone where the dragon was carved in intricate detail and gazed up at the corresponding stars.

"I have searched these stones many times and I have found nothing," he said.

"You won't find anything," she told him. "Not by daylight. But when everything is dark and the moon comes out- " she let her words trail off. "Then everything changes. You must get down on your knees first. You can't see it when you are standing."

He did as she requested and dropped down beside her so that they were both kneeling.

"If you look at it from a child's perspective, you will see something very different. It's strange to find moon stones here, too, but here they are. They form a very different pattern under the ledge when you look at them from a different angle. It took me a while to realize this. But then I spent a lot of time exploring the castle. And I suppose my mind was more open when I was a child."

She touched the moon stones, showing him the complete picture that they made, the half that was seen and the half that was hidden. There was an almost breathless edge of excitement in her voice, like they were discovering a buried treasure together.

"Does this mean something to you?" she asked at the same time that he turned his head to look at her in astonishment.


	10. Chapter 10

Both Rey and Kylo Ren stared at the carving before them. It was an intricate, beautifully-wrought carving of a dragon and a woman in flowing robes.

"The dragon is clearly wounded," he said as he ran his hand lightly over the stones. "And perhaps- "

"Perhaps," she prompted.

"It seems he has been half tamed by the woman."

"He doesn't look very tame," Rey said dubiously. "He looks like he will devour her."

"But see how her hand is reaching out toward him. She does not look like she is afraid." He drew back and got to his feet in a single lithe motion. "Then again, she has a dagger in her hand," he said. "Maybe she will kill the dragon when he is unaware."

"Must you look at everything in terms of conquest, war and treachery?" she asked him. "I think that could be exceedingly limiting. Perhaps the dagger represents something else. Maybe the woman and the dragon themselves represent something entirely different. Look at the weapons the dragon has. Fire. Sharp claws and teeth. And superior size. He could rip her to shreds in a moment, and very definitely kill her much more easily than she could kill him."

"Unless her weapons are more powerful," he said, still soberly contemplating the carving.

"What weapons?" she asked. "That small dagger?"

He turned to look at her, saw the moonlight kindling silver fire in her hair and making her profile look like she had been carved from marble herself.

"She could paralyze him with a look from her eyes," he said without taking his gaze from her. "A touch from her mouth could confuse him and make him forget who he is."

"You mean like a kiss? What woman would kiss a fire-breathing dragon?"

He didn't answer her. He turned, and with his back to her, stood facing the turbulent sea in the distance. "Fate has brought us together again," she heard him say. "There must be a reason for that. But even seeing this, I know no more than I knew before."

"But you have gained knowledge," she told him. "Just because you don't understand it yet, doesn't mean it isn't important. Some things are only understood when the time is right."

"You sound like a seer of Chandresh," he said. "You talk in riddles."

"Somehow I cannot think of you as listening to the words of any seer, but riddles usually lead to answers, do they not? One thing you have not learned, Kylo Ren, is patience and that is a very valuable lesson to have missed." She looked at him from the corner of her eye. "Ah, but then patience is a virtue and you- " She let her words trail off, their meaning clear.

"And I have no virtues," he finished for her. He sighed but remained silent as he stared out towards the mist-veiled water, his eyes fixed on something distant, beyond even the churning waves that were throwing themselves ceaselessly on the shore.

Had she been able to read his thoughts, she would have known how difficult it was for him, a man who had always been so alone and so darkly brooding in his thoughts to willingly share certain thoughts with another human being. But strangely, he was finding that the sharing was creating in him a sense of contentment and well-being he had never known before. He realized it was something he had missed in his life, this sharing. He had never met a woman like her before. She alone had threatened the walls that surrounded his heart.

"At least your father wanted to be with you and did his best to make sure you were safe," he said, wondering if that accounted for who she had become.

"And that was not your experience as a child?" she asked.

His low laugh was a bitter, humorless sound. "My father would have been happier if I had never existed. Before I was even born, he wanted my mother to end my life."

"Why?"

"There are too many reasons to speak about," he answered her with a negligent shrug. "Needless to say, she did not abide by his wishes. After I was born, he did his best to deny his part in my birth and said I was bastard-born, which, ironically, was only too true because my parents never married. Even when she was with child, he refused to marry her and denied her even that dignity. But they stayed together, and when he realized he could not change the fact of my existence, he had no choice but to tolerate me as an unavoidable nuisance. But when it came to acting out his hatred, few could have bested him. That he could not break my spirit with his brutal punishments, made him even angrier. And quite merciless, I assure you. I always believed that his one goal as a father was to make sure I regretted being born. His idea of being a successful parent was to control me and make sure that I knew my place."

He paused and glanced down at her as a visible shiver went through her.

"Ah," he said, with a dark laugh. "That makes you angry?"

"No child should be treated like that," she said, meaning it from the depths of her heart. "And I don't think anyone could ever control you."

"Well, he tried. But while he had his own version of the darker side of man's brutal nature, he was a different person to the rest of the world. And that, more often than not, is what I have found motivates most men. The lust for power and control. Greed. Selfishness."

He shoved his dark hair back with both hands, pausing for several long moments to look up at the stars, then swept his hand wide to indicate them. "Behold how many worlds there are to be conquered. Enough to satisfy anyone's greed or brutality." He turned to look at her. "Even mine."

"Is it really your wish?" she asked him.

"Have I not already proven this to you?"

"You have proven only that it is the way of the world you come from."

"It wasn't my world," he said very quietly under his breath as he continued to look up beyond those stars, seeing things she did not see, could not see. There were too many walls in place between them.

"My mother was so busy fighting with him that she forgot about me." He paused again. "You said you would fight me with your last breath," he reminded her. "Not that I would expect anything less from you. You were a willful, stubborn child all those years ago. Some things do not change."

"I'm not a child anymore."

No she wasn't.

But Rey was seeing something she had not seen before. The things he had revealed to her showed him in a different light, and she was beginning to understand him as she had not understood him before.

"You still have not faced the ghosts of your past," she said, her understanding evolving, reaching new depths. "You still fear they will rise up against you."

"Some things should stay buried and undisturbed," he said without looking at her. Then lifting his head and his gaze to her, he asked, "And have you reconciled with your own inner demons?"

"No, but I try to see them for what they are. I don't want them to control me."

"So you admit they do still exist."

"They are real enough," she admitted.

He scowled suddenly. "Enough of this talk of the past. What's done is done. Talking about it won't change anything."

But she was on the verge of opening a door that had heretofore remained closed and she felt an uncomfortable feeling at the core of her being.

"The past," she whispered as something terrible tried to rise up inside her. "It taught you- " she began even as she fought the knowing.

"That I was to never show mercy," he finished for her with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. "That my enemies had to be broken until they were bleeding and begging for mercy, that it was the only way to earn their respect."

She shook her head slowly, recognizing this as one of the deepest, most damaging lies he had been taught.

"You've always been different, Rey," he went on, trying to change the subject to her. "Even as a child there was far too much knowledge in your eyes. Even then you saw things that other people didn't see."

"And why did you bring me back here?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"Because this is where it all began, and this is where it all ended."

She seemed to hear his voice strangely for a moment, as if it came from a far distance. Where what began and what ended, she wondered and wanted to ask. But out of nowhere an eerie sensation tingled down her spine, both frightening and bewildering her at the same time.

"You're a man of many layers, Kylo Ren. Much more than you let an entire galaxy see."

He arched a dark, challenging brow in her direction. "You think you see more than others see?"

"We both know that I do," she dared to say.

He scoffed and turned his face away from her, but he soon turned back again. "Are you so puffed up with conceit in your own abilities already that you think you can read my mind? The mind of – what did you call me again? The scourge of the galaxy?"

Although he had made his deep voice sound very stern, he was, she knew, half teasing her. But his faint smile faded and his frown deepened as he looked down at her. "Maybe you only see what I want you to see."

"You would like me to believe that," she said a little breathlessly as she heard a voice calling from a distance. She looked around sharply for the source of the sound, but Kylo Ren seemed to have heard nothing. As his gaze continued to hold hers, his head tilted slightly and his dark eyes grew narrowed. He glanced briefly at the castle walls around them.

"Not too many children can say they have lived in a place so big that they could conceal themselves in any number of places and never be found. Maybe that has had its impact on you."

"I am aware of your connection to this place," she said. "I- I feel it, too."

It was strong now, that connection, like a low vibration of energy, and it was growing stronger, or perhaps she was only more aware of it. It made her tremble in spite of herself. Even he could see it.

"You get like this when you get close to the truth, don't you?" he asked as his frown deepened. "Only you still can't let yourself see it. I can help you do that."

"No, not you," she breathed almost helplessly. "You use everything for the dark side."

She seemed to be poised now at the very edge of some kind of chasm, a place that was darker than dark, deeper than the depths of an ocean. She looked up at him. "What happened here?"

"Things so terrible that you don't want to let yourself remember."

"Were you a part of it?"

He didn't answer her right away. "I was supposed to be a part of it. But it changed me, too. I saw the truth. Not all of the truth. But some of it."

She felt a coldness suddenly come creeping over her, as if the very blood in her veins had turned to ice, as if the marrow deep in her bones had frozen. "When we go so far into the darkness," she managed to say, some understanding reaching her from a far deeper level, a level so deep she only half understood the words she spoke. "It takes us a long time to get back to who we really are."

He turned and faced her and brought his closed fist to his chest. "Because that's all there was, I thought the darkness was an answer to all the pain and loss inside me," he began in a voice raw with emotion. "And for a time it was. I felt something coiled inside me, something so powerful that I thought it would destroy me, something that would devour me whole. I don't expect you to understand or to trust me- "

"I don't know if I ever could trust you," she whispered the confession, a confession he ignored.

"Here we can find the truth. Together."

"But you have allied yourself with the darkness," she protested as she felt the strangeness coming over her again, even more strongly this time, that breathless sensation, that pull towards the darkness. Maybe not his darkness. But a darkness. There was pain. Or something very close to pain. In an instant, time went backward and a flood of memories almost swamped her,

Without warning, a picture of Kylo Ren flashed into her mind. Another night. Here. A rainy night of intense blackness with no stars, no moon. She could see his boots revealed now and then from beneath the black hem that swirled above the ground as he walked. There was a black cowl drawn over his head and yet, even watching him from a distance, she knew him out of all the other men. She would know him anywhere. She could still clearly see the garish glow from the fires on the folds of his cape and the saber in his hand as he fought-

"What is it?" she heard from very far away. "What do you see?"

She could not speak. She could not utter a single word and he understood this. She slipped farther into the past, beyond that night. As she sank deeper into the visions, he was able to see what she saw for himself.

Not only warriors, but women and children, too. Some of them were lying on the ground in death throes. Some were beyond help. But others- Their faces were lined by horror and suffering as they were tortured in unimaginable ways, as they watched their loved ones be tortured, their bodies pierced and bleeding from horrible wounds.

They both heard the agonized cries, saw the blood running in streams on that night of fearsome slaughter. The grief. The helplessness.

There were layers of memories, not all of them hers and it was almost too much for her.

Even after the vision faded, she was till trembling.

"Rey!" she heard Kylo Ren call sharply. His fingers were closed tightly around her wrist, as if he was trying to pull her back to the present. He could not only see the anguish in her face, he could feel it with her. She wasn't just connecting with memories. She was connecting with the emotions that went with them, which were far, far more powerful and devastating.

"There was a terrible battle here. More than one. I felt there was- something I had to know in the darkness, that if I could only go a little further, that I would discover what it was- "

"You've gone far enough for now," he told her. "Sink too deeply and you may never come back."

Yes, he had felt that dark place through her and he had felt for the first time the emotions of others. So deep was the darkness in that chasm of emotion that he had been afraid he would not be able to pull her back even using the power of the force within him, and it had made him afraid.

She was looking around as if only now becoming aware of her surroundings as he frowningly contemplated her. "I have seen some things here, too, but I was never aware of so much before."

All the years there, he had not been aware of what she was able to draw up with so little effort. But there was something deeper, something behind the vision that disrupted him inside. His hand still held her wrist tightly, as if by that physical connection he could keep her there with him. He slowly relaxed his fingers.

Rey felt, with some surprise, his concern for her, felt, too, the impulses deep inside him that might have governed him had fate and circumstances allowed it, if they had not forced him to be what he was.

"You're shivering," he said.

A cold breeze was stirring. He took his cape off and draped it around her shoulders, without asking permission to do so, and she allowed the gesture without flinching as she might have done in the past.

"I'm grateful for your kindness," she said impulsively, without thinking.

He paused, but he didn't look at her as he stepped back. No one had ever said that to him before.

"I felt safer going through the darkness with you here," she went on. "You gave me the courage to do so."

He scoffed again, but without much conviction this time and his eyes grew dark with some emotion. "Even if I am a scourge? I should tell you," he said gruffly. "That you are entirely too bold with a man who is your kidnapper."

"Am I? I don't know how to act in this situation. I have never been kidnapped before."

It amazed her to realize that not so long ago she had been terrified of him and of the strange emotions he unleashed inside of her. But now- Now she was feeling something very different, something that felt vaguely like a longing, an indescribable ache she had never felt before. She could not even begin to describe what it was, not even to herself. She only knew that it was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

She stared up at the sculpted masculine jaw, tensing now with his own emotions, whatever they might be. She admitted to herself that she was not only drawn to him, but that she found him terribly, ruthlessly handsome and for some reason that unsettled her.

"What?" he asked, his frown returning as he gazed down at her.

"I was thinking that you have the look of a Madav pirate I once saw."

He laughed outright at that. It was a deep, rumbling sound from his chest, the first honest laugh she had heard from him, a sound that did something strange to her inside.

"And can you tell me honestly that you would not find a pirate of Madav any less ruthless than me? He, too, would take what he wanted. Even a captive princess."

"I saw such men on Jakku," she told him.

"And none of them carried you off? That surprises me."

"I always kept myself veiled. I was advised to do so."

"It's a good thing you did. I have no doubt they would have found you too tempting a prize to ignore, and then I would never have had the chance to kidnap you myself."

"And then you would have had no one to interpret clues for you, you mean," she corrected him.

"I was not thinking about clues. Or interpretations," he said, his voice low and husky with its faint accent and something else she could not define.

"What then- " she began but stopped before she got the words out.

His maleness, his virility had a profound effect on her, awakening every nerve in her body until she felt almost intoxicated by his nearness. Standing so close to him, she felt almost overwhelmed by the unyielding strength that was so much a part of who he was.

He reached out and brushed a stray curl back from her face. But after he had done so, he didn't draw his hand back. He gently traced his bare fingers along her cheek then down along the curve of her chin.

Her eyes closed as something deep inside her responded to his gentleness, making her feel very much like the unfolding petals of a rose.

"There are so many reasons why I should not yield to you," she whispered with her eyes still closed.

"All of them valid," he agreed low-voiced, drinking in her beauty freely. She had done something to him, he knew, made him reckless, brought him to some kind of dangerous precipice.

He leaned closer to her now, till his mouth was a mere breath away from her own. He murmured something in a different language - a curse, perhaps – as he pulled her into his arms and brushed his mouth against hers, once, twice. But the third kiss was different. It lingered, deepened until all rational thought fled and for one brief moment in eternity it seemed there was only the two of them left in the universe. Only one man. One woman. One moment. His hungering kisses ravaged not only her mouth, but her heart and soul as well. They took her to a place she had never imagined existed before.

Dazed and breathless as the kiss abruptly ended, Rey was confused as she felt his body stiffen and draw away from her. His head lifted with a jerk and it seemed that he had forgotten her entirely as he continued to look up. She saw then what she had not seen before.

A fleet of ships overhead, moving slowly and inexorably over them, blocking out the stars.

She looked at him with alarm.

His eyes narrowed, blazing like dark fire. "It's an invasion," he said. "One meant to take me by surprise."

Still looking up, he said, "Hide yourself. In a place even I could not find you." He held his hand out, abruptly cutting off anything she might have said. "Do not even think about where you will hide. I do not want that knowledge in my head. Go. When it is safe, I will come for you.

"Go!" he commanded her.

And so she ran.


	11. Chapter 11

The weather had taken a turn for the worst, bringing not only a drastic drop in the temperature but also snow and freezing rain that fell for days out of an ominously grey sky. But a weak sun had been struggling to show itself all morning. It would blaze forth for a few moments only to be covered by the scudding clouds again. There were several missing slats in the weathered roof over Rey's head and the early morning light poured in for the space of several heartbeats, affording her a small token of warmth, but it promised to be another frigid day and she watched as light drifts of snow wafted upward to swirl ghostlike before her.

The bleakness of the weather had had its effect on her. It had made her even more acutely aware of her aloneness these past few days. Kylo Ren was still gone. The knights were gone as well, so she had been on her own for weeks. But that was about to change.

She left the protection of the small sheltered space and stepped forward to stand at the top of the wide stone steps. She still had Kylo Ren's heavy cape wrapped around her shoulders and the hood was pulled forward over her head. But even with that protection, it was so cold here in the open that her face felt like it had already turned to ice. It was so cold that she began to shiver and had to clench her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. She was a forlorn-looking picture as she stood there, her slight figure enveloped in the folds of the black cloak, the contrasting snow swirling around her. Several strands of her hair had come loose and they were being tossed by the icy wind. Nevertheless, she turned into the wind and waited.

A squeak of rusted hinges was the first sound that intruded upon the snow-swept silence as the heavy wooden door swung open before her. The door banged hard against the stone wall behind it, shuddering on its hinges. She had recognized the ship. She now recognized the man who stepped through the doorway.

"So you  _are_  here," Han Solo breathed with obvious relief. As he stepped forward, his eyes remained fixed on her face. His gaze was intent, searching. He was not dressed for the cold. He rubbed his hands briskly together and blew on them to warm them as he hunched his shoulders against the wind.

"You're here alone?" he asked, his eyes shifting first to the left and then to the right, before narrowing suspiciously on the shadowed space behind her.

She nodded.

"Well, then," he said. "Let's get you off this godforsaken planet."

Half an hour later, she was back aboard the Millenium Falcon. Saffi was in a carrier beside her. She couldn't leave the dog alone. She didn't think he would be able to survive by himself, especially with the weather as severe as it was.

Han Solo came from the back of the ship and slid into his seat beside her. "When you first disappeared, we didn't know what had happened to you," he said. "I came as soon as I heard."

"Heard what?" she asked, looking around at him, watching as he pressed a sequence of buttons on the panel above him, which activated various lights and sounds. She soon heard the hum of the engines.

"Not much," he answered her as he stayed focused on the panel. "Only that they are still looking for you." He checked some gauges, tapped one of them repeatedly before he turned to look at her and said, "You're a gutsy girl to have survived out there all on your own."

"I'm not as fragile as I may seem," she said. "What happened to the others?"

"Everyone survived. I assume they're doing the same thing we're doing, trying to keep themselves alive. Not always an easy thing these days."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"People talk, especially smugglers. Let's just say they have to make it their business to know what's going on in the galaxy. There's an underground network of information that the Empire has been trying to stop for a long time, but they haven't had much success. Not yet at least."

"And you came for me  _why_?" she wanted to know. The question had been on her mind ever since she had first seen him. He hardly knew her and he had never seemed to her like the kind of man to take such risks with his own life. Not if there wasn't something in it for him.

His answer was short and succinct and it didn't tell her much. "Someone had to."

After a pause, while keeping her eyes straight ahead, she asked, "And- Kylo Ren? Have you heard what happened to him?"

"On Bakrane the last I heard," came the reply.

"What's on Bakrane?" she asked.

"Imperial forces. Lots of them."

She frowned as she thought this over, then asked, "Where are  _we_  going?"

"To Algheda."

"I've never heard of it. Why there?"

"I have contacts there. Friends. We'll be safe there. For a while at least."

Safe, she thought. Was there any place that was really safe?

He saw the frowning expression on her face. "What are you thinking?"

"I was safe enough where I was," she answered him honestly. "I'm not sure I should have left."

He shot a dark, sidelong glance over at her. "You were a prisoner there. You would have frozen to death or starved by yourself. I don't call that safe. And what reason would you have for staying?"

What reason? Because- because Kylo Ren had told her that he would come back for her when it was safe to do so. Now how would he find her? But she didn't voice her thoughts to Han Solo. And she definitely wasn't going to mention those kisses. She couldn't exactly say why, but she didn't completely trust the man. She never had. There was something under Han Solo's carefree, don't-give-a-damn manner that kept her guard up. Under his devil-may-care surface he seemed to be hiding something although she had no clue as to what it might be.

"If you didn't know, I spent part of my childhood there," she told him. "And I was never locked up there."

He breathed a short, scoffing laugh under his breath, but his eyes seemed to grow somewhat guarded now. "In case you hadn't noticed, the whole planet was a prison."

There was a burning question in Han Solo's brain, one that Rey was not aware of. It had been there all along, but he didn't dare ask it.

"But you're free of him now," he said without looking at her.

She didn't look at him either as she asked, "Am I?"

He didn't reply to that, but his eyes seemed to grow as stormy as the grey skies they had just left behind. "If you're not, you soon will be," he assured her.

She was looking down at her clasped hands and she said, half to herself, "I- I saw a different side of him."

His head snapped around at that. "I'm sure he wanted you to  _think_  you saw a different side of him. But don't let him fool you. The man knows only treachery."

"What do you think is happening to him?" she couldn't help asking. "Have you heard anything about that?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, watching her face closely now.

"I don't think he left of his own free will," she said. "He didn't expect them. He told me they had come to take him by surprise and then he told me to hide."

For a moment Han Solo could not hide the surprise in  _his_  eyes. Jealously mounted along with his suspicions. "So you don't think he would have left you so abruptly if he'd had a choice. Is that what you're saying?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but could not come up with an answer that would not have raised more questions.

"It almost sounds like you're worried about him," the man beside her said with a husky hint of sarcasm creeping into his voice. "I'm starting to think you actually had feelings for that monster. How did he manage that?"

Again, she didn't know what to say to that so she remained silent.

He noticed that she didn't even try to deny the accusation. The woman confused him. He didn't know how to read her. She didn't seem like a woman who had been brutally ravaged by a monster. If there really was something between them, he knew Kylo Ren would hunt her down to the ends of the galaxy to get her back. Of that Han Solo had no doubt. He, himself, had not decided what to do with her yet. He was still wrestling with that dilemma. He had enough conscience left for that. But it wasn't much of a conscience, and he didn't let it trouble him overmuch. All those unpleasant little annoyances like guilt and regret could be swept aside in a moment if he so chose. He'd had a lot of practice there.

But this woman had him tied up in knots. And it was time, he decided, to start the untangling.

* * *

_They didn't stay long on Algheda._  They quickly left that planet after a nasty run-in with a bounty hunter in which they barely escaped with their lives. They went to an even more remote settlement on Rugashan. It was a strange, foreign planet that Rey found exceedingly harsh and forbidding, even a little intimidating. It seemed completely wild and unbroken, with the Spartan settlement of Mareeza only a dubious clearing in the center of an impenetrable, vast forest of gnarled, misshapen plants and trees that stretched out on all sides.

On Rugashan, as she had been on Algheda, Rey was pretty much at the mercy of Han Solo. Wherever he decided to go, she had no choice but to follow him. She didn't like the feeling and vowed to change her situation as soon as possible.

"This place is even worse than the last place you took me," Rey said without thinking as she looked around her. "It seems so- remote."

"It's out a ways," he admitted, a little irked that she didn't seem grateful that he had risked his life, and more, to rescue her. "But remote is what we want right now."

"Do you actually know anything about this place?" she asked him. She really had a bad feeling about this place.

"I know it," he replied grimly. "It's not much, just an outpost. And you're right. It doesn't have much to offer, except its remoteness. And it is dangerous here. I won't lie to you," he added. "So don't wander off by yourself. You stay here for a little bit while I check things out. We'll lay low for a while and get some information and then we'll make our way to Vasant."

"Who or what is Vasant?"

"A friend of mine."

"Another bounty hunter?"

"No, no more bounty hunters. I should have realized- " he didn't finish what he had been about to say. Instead he said, "Vasant is a smuggler. We go way back. He owes me. I saved his life once."

She didn't tell him that she didn't feel comfortable with him leaving her alone, nor that she didn't like this place at all. "But we're not staying here?" she asked.

"Just for a while."

He was armed to the teeth with weapons of every description strapped to his body. And he seemed more alert than he had been before. That worried her. Her eyes raked him briefly, taking in the various weapons.

He must have misread her look because an unmistakable heat, one that alarmed her, kindled in his eyes. She saw the suggestion of a leer on his face and he swaggered a little as he crossed the room. Did the man really think she was interested in him? What had she gotten herself into? He was old enough to be-

"Why don't you get some rest," he said, cutting into her thoughts. "I'll be back soon. Sorry we have to share a room," he added. "But it's too dangerous for you to be on your own here. Remember that."

Then why, she wondered, was he leaving her alone now?

* * *

_Rey lay alone on the narrow bed_ , listening to the raucous sounds of laughter and conversation that drifted up from the room below. When Han Solo finally showed up, she knew immediately that he had been drinking. He had been doing a lot of that and he didn't try to hide it from her. He still had a bottle in one hand. He lifted it to his mouth and drank deeply, draining the bottle completely before he set it aside with a deep, satisfied sigh.

"Did you find out what you wanted to know?" she asked as she sat up and watched him. She hadn't been able to sleep anyway.

"That's what I was there for," he said, not giving her much of an answer.

He belched loudly as he leaned over and unbuckled one of his gunbelts.

"You're comfortable among these kinds of people, aren't you?" she asked. Some of the people she had seen so far were absolutely terrifying-looking. "This is the kind of life you're used to."

In the dim light, she saw him tilt his head to one side as he straightened and considered her. "Is that a problem?"

"Should I consider it a problem?"

"You can consider anything you like, Princess. I can't change that."

She stiffened. Did he know something about her past?

"I've been wondering," he began in a lowered voice as he continued to regard her. "How many people in the galaxy would defend Kylo Ren."

She didn't like his tone and she tensed. "Probably not very many," she admitted defensively. "But in spite of what you think, he  _was_  kind to me."

He laughed under his breath. "Kind? And you fell for that?" His face suddenly hardened and he nodded slowly, the muscles around his mouth tightening as if he was making his mind up about her. "And just how well  _did_  you get to know him?"

Rey flashed a wary glance in his direction, but forced herself to meet his accusing gaze without flinching. "What are you implying?"

"Implying? I'm not implying anything. I'm only asking you a question." He stepped closer to her and she was immediately overwhelmed by the combined smells of alcohol and stale male sweat. He was drunk. She understood that, but that didn't mean she had to submit to his belligerent interrogation. She didn't know if it was the accusing light in his eyes that angered her the most, or the smug smirk that he wasn't completely successful in hiding.

But the mind behind that smirk was suddenly like a book opening before her. It was not a very complex book, she realized, and out of nowhere came the fleeting impression, one still somewhat hazy to her, that he was guilty himself of the things he was trying to accuse Kylo Ren of. She was also aware of a vortex of emotions churning inside him.

There was hate, and so much more, reflected in his eyes as he leaned closer to her.

"I'll tell you a secret. We'll get along so much better if you stop trying to defend him to me."

This was said forcefully, in such a furious undertone, that she turned away from him, trying to regroup, both from his statement and from the intensity of the emotions she could sense inside him.

Rey heard him muttering to himself behind her. She could hear his footsteps, too, as he strode after her and reached her in two strides. Before she could stop him, he had grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him.

"I asked you a question," he gritted out between clenched teeth. "Since I saved your life, the least you can do is to give me a straight answer. Did he or did he not . . . "

The question was put so vulgarly, so bluntly that she was shocked by his crudeness and her startled gasp showed it. Of course, he had no right to question her about such a thing, but it seemed as if her very existence hung on her answer.

"No," she breathed, thinking it was the only way to get him to let go of her. She didn't have to lie. "He didn't touch me in that way. Not once."

"Well, you're lucky there," he said ominously as he released her, some deeper meaning in his eyes as a tense, uncomfortable silence settled between them.

Suddenly, she could feel the hatred in him so strongly that it almost took her breath away. She felt all the rage and anger connected to that hatred, could feel the force of it as it crashed against her in unrelenting waves. For a helpless moment, she was drawn into it, immersed in the blackness because it went so deep. She-

She knew she was a fool to have blindly followed this man.


	12. Chapter 12

He had been stripped naked and chained, shackled like some wild beast that had fought hard against captivity. He hung there helplessly like the victim of some brutal crucifixion. Thick iron bands encircled his bruised and bleeding wrists. His arms were drawn up over his head. Only a single lantern glowed in the center of the cavernous space, casting a garish yellow light over his body which was a mass of raw, gaping wounds that still oozed blood. His head hung forward and his eyes were closed. Blood still dripped from the ends of his long black hair.

Snoke twined his long, gnarled fingers carefully together as he contemplated the seemingly-lifeless man before him, still seeking to understand what was beyond his understanding. There was still that shred of Kylo Ren that had not yet been yielded. No matter that he was at death's door. No matter the threat of more violence to come.

There was something here that was strong, far more powerful than anything he had ever encountered before. To understand the darkness, one had to immerse oneself in it, but this-  _this_ seemed so beyond his grasp that that it almost pained him to try and probe it. It was like a closed door that he could not open.

Whatever it was, he had not been able to root it out and destroy it, though not for lack of trying. But destroy it he would. He had no doubt about that. He was able to console himself with the thought that he would make the man before him regret very deeply his resistance and beg for mercy with his last gasping breath. That was the only reason he was still alive. Snoke would have that final, exquisite moment, the moment that a man yielded up only on the threshold of death. Kylo Ren's suffering must be epic, unequaled, almost legendary. He must be an example of the fate of anyone who dared to defy him.

Still there was some regret that it was all about to come to an end. He would have preferred not to bring about the end of Kylo Ren before he had the woman securely in his grasp to replace him. He shook his head, wondering again that he could not reach her either. It was as if some stumbling block had been placed in his way. There was the force bond between the two of them. That was not what surprised him. What baffled him, frustrated him to no end, was that he could not penetrate it, no matter how hard he had tried.

"He's not dead yet?" Abensar Parege stepped silently forward, much like a tiny mouse daring to venture out before a ravening cat. When he was not reprimanded for his intrusion, the man made a soft tisking noise with his tongue, impatience and more in the sound.

Snoke had spent a great deal of time gazing at his victim in silence. Abensar did not understand such an obsession. The man was unconscious. He could not entertain anyone with his groans, something that Abensar had found exquisitely satisfying for many days. So he looked on this as a waste of time.

"His uncommon endurance has only prolonged his suffering," Abensar remarked as if he was commenting on something as mundane as the weather.

Snoke slowly nodded his agreement. "There are consequences for defying me and even the great Kylo Ren must pay his due."

Both men looked at the prisoner impassively, almost as if peering curiously at something unusual they had found crawling along the Bakrane forest floor.

"I find it truly amazing that he has survived this long," Abensar said. "It's a very long time for a human."

"Yes, he resisted longer than I thought he would, but he is merely a man and that is how I want him to end his days, suffering in his human weakness."

"Something keeps him alive," Abensar observed without emotion. "He may surprise us with how long he does linger."

Perhaps that was true, Snoke thought to himself, but his torment would come to an end eventually. A man could not be tortured forever. Everyone had his, or her, limit. When it ended- Well, Snoke fed on the torture like any predator feeds on the blood of its victims. When there was nothing left, the hunger began again.

"Almost a pity to bring it all to an end," Snoke murmured under his breath.

"There will be others," Abensar assured him. There were always others.

"Not like Kylo Ren."

Abensar's head turned a little more sharply than he had intended. Jealousy had risen, swift and uncontrollable, for the briefest of moments. He knew Snoke had to be aware of the petty emotion but he showed no sign of it.

Snoke merely lifted one claw-like hand. "Leave me," he croaked.

Abensar got down and braced his hands on the cold, smooth rock beneath his feet, lowering his head until it was touching the hard ground. "As you wish."

When he was gone, Snoke continued to stare at Kylo Ren, his narrowed eyes gleaming darkly in the gloom of his hood. "What has changed you," he muttered to himself as he waited for Kylo Ren to open his eyes.

* * *

"Hey, I didn't mean to be so rough on you."

Han Solo poured himself another drink and then he filled a glass for Rey. He silently slid the glass towards her, frowning when she made no move to pick it up.

"Go ahead," he urged her. "It'll make you feel better, loosen you up some."

But she only sat there staring at the glass without touching it, without saying a word.

A scowl darkened his face when she refused his peace offering. "I couldn't understand the thought of him doing- things to you," he said by way of apology. "Things that couldn't be undone."

If this was some kind of excuse for his actions, Rey thought, it was a woefully inadequate one, and far too late. The damage had already been done, and as he said, couldn't be undone.

"We don't need to talk about this," she said, avoiding his narrowed gaze.

He set his own empty glass down with a heavy thump and leaned forward. "Oh, but we do, Princess."

She looked up sharply. "Why do you keep calling me that?"

"Because that's what you are, isn't it? That's what they're saying."

"Whatever blood runs in my veins doesn't change anything."

"You can try and make yourself believe that," he said on the edge of sarcasm. "But somehow I don't buy it. Just how strong  _is_  your Sith blood?"

Her frustration boiled over. "Why are you trying so hard to bait me?"

"That's a good question," he said as he poured himself another drink. He drank it down in one long, loud gulp, and because she had her back turned towards him, there was an openly lustful, appreciative male look in his eyes as they slowly swept the outline of her womanly figure that was backlit by the moon and stars in the night sky.

The truth was that he had not been able to put the woman out of his mind. Not from the first moment he had laid eyes on her. A passion for her had gotten into his very soul. And equally as powerful, jealousy and hatred for the man who called himself Kylo Ren had gripped him as a result. For far too many nights he had lain awake with lustful thoughts for her filling his mind and making his body ache. But he had also been tortured by thoughts of her in the arms of Kylo Ren. He was a man burning with desire for her, and for whatever reason, she had his passions raging almost out of control.

"You've been isolated your whole life," he began when she turned back around, thinking to explain himself and to pacify her. "There's a great deal for you to learn, to experience. And I can teach you- so much. Right now you see the world through a very narrow window because of your inexperience. That's why you view Kylo Ren through a haze of- girlish, unrealistic sentiment. You don't yet understand how dishonest a man can be, how treacherous."

While he was speaking, he had suddenly, somehow closed the gap between them. As fast as a snake striking, he reached out and wrapped his fingers tightly around one of her wrists and brought it to his mouth. His tongue slowly stroked and caressed its way up to the sensitive flesh of her inner wrist, making her gasp.

"I can't help myself, Rey," he murmured over her captured wrist. "You steal my breath away."

Without raising his head, he looked up and searched her face, perhaps trying to read her reaction to his bold caress and even bolder admission. His eyes burned with an intensity she found disconcerting, if not alarming.

"I- What are you trying to say?" she asked him, trying to pull her hand away as her heart began to pound with panic.

"You  _defended_  him," he almost groaned. "How was I supposed to feel? But you were talking about something you know nothing about. You know nothing about the darker side that can drive some people."

She might have argued that he was wrong there. Very wrong.

"What would you know about him?" she asked.

"I did know him. Once. But that was a long time ago, and knowing what I know now, I can tell you that if he was standing here before me right now, I wouldn't waste any time sending him straight to hell where he belongs."

She drew a slow, deep breath, realizing at that instant that it would do no good to argue with him. Right now, she only wanted him to let go of her. "I appreciate you rescuing me, but- "

"We've gone beyond that and you know it," he interrupted her, still not relinquishing her hand. "You've beguiled me, Rey," he said, burying his face in her hair and breathing in its delicate perfume.

She pulled away from him. "Wh- what are you doing?"

Even through his inebriated senses, he realized that he may have gone too far. She was fighting him and a combination of wrath and passion flared up inside him. "What did he do? Poison your mind against me?"

"Why would he do that?" she asked. " _How_  could he do that?"

When his head lifted slowly, Rey found herself staring into a face that was full of venom and hatred so strong it set her back.

"You're not the only one with special blood running through your veins, sweetheart. And if you knew what I know, you might not feel so sympathetic towards him."

Wide-eyed and confused, she stared back at him, waiting for him to say more. But he only turned away from her with a snarled curse.

For days she had been feeling something awful, something that felt very much like a knife blade had been thrust deeply into her center. It had no source, that terrible sensation, but it would not go away. She could not banish it from her mind or her body. It was strong now, stronger than it had ever been. And because she didn't want to go anywhere else with this man, she spoke her thoughts out loud and said impulsively, "I want to go to Bakrane."

He turned slowly around. "Bakrane?"

She saw the comprehension slowly dawning in his eyes. He laughed under his breath but there was no humor in it. His voice and his eyes had grown hard as flint. "You're thinking about him now? Still? Are you that much of a fool? You would willingly walk into what could very well be a trap? And at the very least a death sentence. Or worse."

The thought of going to Bakrane did terrify her. The thought that she would even consider going there confused even her. But something pulled her relentlessly. Something she could not define, either to herself or to anyone else.

His lips twisted into bitter lines. "You want to throw your life away, I suppose that's your choice. But you can do that easily enough here. I won't take you to Bakrane."

He whirled away from her again and paced across the room in growing agitation.

"I'll find someone else to take me," she said to his back.

He went still before he spun around to face her again. At first he didn't look at her. His eyes remained fixed on the wall behind her as he took a deliberate step towards her. He did look at her finally, but his expression remained unreadable as he said, "There's something you should know. Something I should have told you before. Kylo Ren is dead."


	13. Chapter 13

_You're lying!_

Rey wanted to scream the accusation at Han Solo. If he had not made a grave mistake in believing that Kylo Ren was dead, she wanted him to be a liar. She wanted it more than she wanted to draw her next breath.

The awful, gut-wrenching sensation at her core was sharp as a knife blade. And yet, in her heart, she refused to believe that what he had just told her was true. Kylo Ren couldn't be dead. She would know it. She would sense it somehow. What had he told her? That the force bond was a forever thing. Even if one of them died, the one left alive would always feel the loss. But what about that terrible disruption that she had been feeling inside lately? Could that be what he had been talking about?

No, she told herself firmly. He wasn't dead. That's not what she was sensing.

She knew that when Kylo Ren had allowed the force bond between them, he had also given her new abilities she had not possessed before and he had done so _willingly_. She would have used that new ability now to draw the truth out of Han Solo, but no matter how hard she tried, she could read nothing from the man. He was like a wall without a door.

He avoided looking at her. His eyes shifted, looked beyond her. "Forget him. Being mixed up with him in any way is only going to get you killed. You should know that by now."

When she did not answer him, he said, "I get it. You need some time alone to process it all. I'll be back in a little while. Be ready to leave by the time I get back."

Without saying another word, he left her.

Still troubled by the shock of hearing that Kylo Ren might be dead, Rey tried to feel his existence, but she could sense nothing at all, only a black, empty void.

* * *

There was the blood darkly staining the ground before him, heavy with its familiar metallic odor, an odor he had grown to relish. There were the shackles, also stained with blood, but no prisoner. And so there was silence for a long, drawn-out space of time.

"How could this have happened?" Snoke asked the question in a voice that was low with barely-suppressed fury. But he need not have asked. He already knew the answer. There were traitors, even here.

He released his breath in a long, sibilant hiss, the odor of it foul and loathsome, enough to make Abensar Parege gag and understand the phrase 'rotten to the core' as he had never understood it before. As Snoke's head turned slowly, Abensar tried to make his mind carefully blank so that Snoke could not read his thoughts. But the intense look in the deep-set eyes was almost demonic and Abensar grew truly afraid.

Snoke was aware of the fear and the repugnance in Abensar Parege's mind, but he dismissed it as he always did. His was a weak mind, an insignificant one and fear was how he controlled the man. It was Kylo Ren who was uppermost in Snoke's thoughts. There was nowhere Kylo Ren could go to escape him. He would hunt him down to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But he now knew, as he had suspected all along, that there was a part of Kylo Ren he had never plumbed. That was not the greater surprise, however. Kylo Ren had gone rogue, and he had felt nothing, no warning whatsoever.

But first things first. There was a purely evil smile on his face as he lifted a gnarled finger and pointed it at a horrified Abensar Parege.

* * *

When Han Solo returned, he seemed greatly agitated although he was doing his best to hide it from Rey. "Have you finally come to your senses?" he asked over his shoulder, and then, still without looking at her, he said, "I hope you're ready to leave, because we have to meet someone and we can't take our time doing it."

"Who?" she asked.

"Someone who can help us get out of here."

"Where will we go?" she wanted to know.

"I'm not sure yet. For now we'll just concentrate on getting out of here in one piece."

She was not reassured by his answer. "What is it you're not telling me?"

He hesitated a long moment before he answered her. "What I'm _not_ telling you is how much danger we're in."

He did not seem willing to give her more than that. "Look," he began impatiently. "I'm your only way out of here. You want to stay here alone for the rest of your life, then that's your choice, but you should know that once I leave, I won't be coming back. At least not for a very, very long time."

Rey had no reply to that. There was nothing she could say. She had spent years trapped alone on one planet already. She had no intention of going through that again, so she gathered up her meager possessions and put Saffi in the cloth sling she had prepared for him.

Before they left the room, Han turned and stabbed a finger at Saffi. "If that dog yaps just once . . . " he left the rest unsaid, but Rey knew exactly what he meant. Hopefully, she was not going to end up in a battle with Han Solo over the dog's life.

Half an hour later, a back door creaked open on a three-story building, one of the tallest that they had passed. They quickly went down a short flight of steps to a basement area and then through another door. The room that they entered was dimly lit with deep shadows filling the corners. A single lantern burned on a table. Han went to a narrow cot on the far side of the room and, lifting the lantern, held it over the person that was lying there beneath a mound of blankets.

At first Rey thought that whoever it was might be sleeping. But the form thrashed on the bed a little and she knew immediately that something was wrong. She didn't know if it was a human lying there. It looked like a human.

Han leaned over the bed and spoke in a foreign language. He listened to the strained reply and straightened as he held Rey's gaze over the bed.

They moved together to the opposite side of the room and spoke in hushed tones.

"What's wrong with him?" Rey asked.

"He says he's been poisoned," Han answered her.

"Poisoned?" Rey echoed. "Do you think it has something to do with us?"

There was a grim tightening of Han's lips. "Hard telling. What I do know is that they've already been here, but that doesn't mean they won't come back."

"Who has been here?"

"Imperial forces. They're searching for something, or some _one_." He looked pointedly at her.

After a silence, Rey turned her face and asked, "Is there something we can do to help him?"

"Not now," was the short reply.

"But- he's- he's suffering."

"Not anymore," Han said soberly.

She looked again at the blanketed figure on the bed and saw that there wasn't any movement there anymore. Han was right. Whoever was lying there was beyond help now.

They heard the sound of doors slamming and heavy footsteps overhead.

"That can't be good," Han muttered, looking up. "Come on. We have to get out of here."

"Where are we going now?"

"We don't have time to discuss it. You're going to have to trust me."

But that was the problem. She didn't trust him.


	14. Chapter 14

Han opened a door which led to a hidden staircase. It was narrow and black as pitch inside, not at all inviting. In fact, the crumbling, ancient-looking opening and what lay beyond it looked menacing, almost sinister. Han gripped the lantern in one hand and led the way straight into the darkness, leaving Rey no choice but to follow him. They hurried along the tunnel like they were being pursued by Rhelang hounds. Rey was following close behind Han Solo, trying hard to keep up with him. The lantern that he held in one hand cast elongated, phantasmagoric shadows that shifted and moved along the walls with them as they gradually descended deeper into the earth.

"Do you know where you're going?" Rey asked anxiously, half out of breath.

His reply wasn't exactly reassuring. "I've got a good idea."

She asked another question. "You're sure this way is safe?"

"I don't know about safe, but I know it's the _only_ way," he answered her.

If not for the lantern's pale yellow light, they would have been enshrouded in total darkness, so she prayed the dwindling flame was going to hold out. The thick stone walls were confining, the ceiling low. The air grew colder by perceptible degrees.

Rey did not feel comfortable following Han Solo blindly anymore. She was thinking hard as she followed him through the darkness. There were a lot of questions in her mind, questions that would help her make up her own mind about whether he was telling her the truth or not about Kylo Ren. She kept hoping that he had _not_ told her the truth. After thinking it over carefully for a while, she decided she would bide her time a little longer. People always had a reason for lying. Mostly they did. There were people who seemed to lie simply because they couldn't help themselves. But she knew that Han Solo was more calculating than that. If he had indeed lied, he would have a reason for lying. She just wasn't sure what it would be.

They entered another section of the tunnel, an even smaller, narrower section. Far ahead of them, the tunnel ended in complete blackness. The air seemed denser here, heavier. Sounds were more muffled.

When she hesitated and hung back, Han looked back at her.

"I don't want to go in there," she said. "I don't like confined spaces."

"Yeah, you and me both," he mumbled half to himself. "But right now we're out of options."

He turned back to the tunnel, but she placed her hand on his arm and stopped him from going any further. "About Kylo Ren- "

His eyes, as he turned back to her, were sharp and intense. They reflected the lantern's glow, but he avoided looking directly at her. "Yeah, about that. The bottom line, and all you need to think about, is that there's no sense in you chasing after a corpse."

She drew back, just as if she had been struck by an unexpected blow, and dragged in a slow, deep breath, stunned because it was such a cold-blooded thing to say.

All she could do was to turn her face away from him as she wrestled with a churning whirlpool of emotions deep inside her soul. That's when she became aware of something in the darkness, something that pulled her relentlessly forward, towards a very, very terrifying place.

Unaware of the extent of the turmoil roiling inside her, he got impatient with her. "Look," he said gruffly. "I'm trying to save your neck along with my own. So the best thing you can do for both of us right now is to be quiet and do what I tell you to do. I don't want to hear another word about- Kylo Ren. Do you understand me?"

The sharp bitterness in his voice as he spoke the name seemed to split open a fissure in the barrier that stood between them. It was as if a doorway had blazed open before her in an instant. If this was the truth about to be revealed to her, she wasn't sure she was ready to face it. It terrified her. At first she instinctively fought against the knowing, but gradually she stopped fighting and felt herself sliding into another place as she allowed herself see what was beyond the door. And suddenly, that deep dark thing she had sensed in him before was like a gaping maw in front of her. It pulled her in so quickly and so completely that she had no control over it. She was immediately immersed in that darkness and all that it hid, helplessly frozen before something that shocked her to her core.

She was experiencing everything, both the good and the bad about Han Solo. Most it was bad. Gut-wrenching bad. There were depths of pain that he didn't allow anyone see. She could see past the false façade as it faded away as easily as ice before fire. She could see the father and husband he had refused to be. What made it so damaging, so damning was that he refused to take responsibility for his choice - for it was a choice, of that there was no doubt. No, he blamed the child for his own failings. And the lie was coiled so tightly around him she knew he would never be free of it. He clung to that lie like a drowning man clings to a sinking raft in the middle of a vast, churning sea. Seeing it all so clearly, how the jealousy and the resentment were like fertile ground for the Darkness, she could not help but feel pity for him.

But worse, so much worse, there was the child Kylo Ren had once been and this man's destructive relationship with him. It was so twisted, so beyond reason, so unfair. So tangled up in his own past. There were scars, such deep scars in both of them.

She felt the child's deep sense of pain and abandonment. Han Solo had built up more lies because he _was_ aware of all of it. He had felt those things, too, in the child. Because he had felt the same things when _he_ had been a child. And deep down, Han Solo knew that because no one had cared for the child, so the child, in turn, wished to care for no one. And that was where, really, the Darkness had gotten a foothold in Kylo Ren.

She stepped back with a startled gasp and stared at the man before her incredulously, struggling to recover from all she had just seen, struggling to keep him from knowing what she had just seen. She was still trying to recover from her shock when she realized Han was calling her name.

"Rey!"

His eyes were narrowed suspiciously. "What's wrong?"

"I- nothing."

"You sure?" He was frowning as he held the lamp closer to her face as if he could read something there.

"I'm sure."

But doubt lingered in his eyes even though he didn't question her any further. At least she had seen enough to know he wasn't leading her into a trap. He muttered something under his breath and saying no more began to lead her into the darkness again.

He should leave her behind, Han thought to himself. He was too old to be a hero. But not, obviously, too old to be a fool. There was a good chance that she was going to end up getting him killed. Yeah, he had lied to her, and maybe she already realized that, but he had already convinced himself that it was for her own good. She was young and idealistic. She had no idea what the galaxy was really like. She didn't know the danger out there. Not like he did.

He turned back when he heard her gasping once again as she sank into ankle-deep, freezing water. He knew damned well what had happened to her. He had just done the same thing himself.

The thick muck was oozing around both of Rey's feet. It had already seeped through the soles of her shoes and she had no idea how deep it was going to get before they got out of here. _If_ they ever got out of here. The walls were rough and crude, not stone now, but packed dirt held back by timbers in some places. The smell was worse than anything she could have imagined and it was getting worse.

Han held the torch up high before him. He looked almost as worried as she felt.

"What is this place?" she asked as she, too, looked around them.

"This is where they stash the bodies," he answered her.

What bodies? she wondered but didn't ask.

She saw that there were skulls embedded in the walls along with various other kinds of bones. Some looked like human skulls, but there were also strange alien skulls, some with only one eye socket instead of two. Some with mouths or eye openings in strange places. Something scurried among the bodies, something that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

Rey could not help crying out. "What was that?"

"You don't want to know."

Han was intently watching everything around them in every direction, shining the lantern everywhere. He jerked his chin in the direction of some of the bones. "If you don't want to join them, we need to get going."

Something fanged and furry pushed itself out from the rotting cloth between two of the bodies. Two more of the small creatures appeared right after the first one. Rey shrank back from the sharp teeth that glinted with long strings of drool in the lantern light. "What are they?"

"Rats. Zaari Rats," Han replied, as alert as she was. "They're vicious little bastards and always hungry. If one of them bites you, we'll never get it loose. Come on before they tell their friends about us. We'll have help up ahead," he added as he grabbed hold of her hand and dragged her along with him.


	15. Chapter 15

The underground passage took many tortuous twists and turns. Eventually, another narrow staircase wound upward. The room they emerged into at the top of the crude stone steps was little more than a low-ceilinged cave. Rey could see no doors, no windows, no exits of any kind. There were no furnishings. It looked exactly like a dead end would look. Had they come all this way only to find there was no way out? Were they going to have to re-trace their steps?

She turned abruptly and looked at Han, almost panicking. "Are we trapped?"

"Trapped?" he echoed, looking confused. He looked around himself and must have finally seen what she saw. He frowned. "No, we're not trapped. We- "

A loud squeak of rusted hinges cut off his words. And then Rey saw that she had been wrong. There was a hidden doorway, one that was built very cleverly right into the rock wall. A furtive-looking, caped figure stepped through the opening. Whoever the man was, he wasted no time in taking Han aside and speaking to him in a heavily-accented, low, fretful voice.

"So no one is sure what really happened?" she heard Han ask as he straightened.

The man in the cape shook his head and then said something else in a voice that was barely audible. Rey had the distinct impression he was especially trying to keep _her_ from hearing what he had to say.

Han was frowning now, and as he glanced over at her from across the room, he said half to himself, "That can only mean- " He didn't finish what he had been about to say. He compressed his lips tightly for a few seconds and then muttered, "Lord help us if that's true."

He didn't only look distracted. He looked shaken, visibly shaken.

"What's wrong?" Rey asked him.

"With what?" he asked evasively.

"Don't play games with me. What were you two arguing about?"

"We weren't arguing."

"Who is he?" Rey wanted to know, looking pointedly at the other man, who was standing silently off to one side now, just waiting.

"He's our guide."

She studied the man through narrowed eyes. He wouldn't even look at her. "Does he even want to be here?" she asked Han, who avoided a direct answer by asking another question.

"Do _we_ want to be here?"

She sighed in exasperation and gave the man another frowning glance over one shoulder. "What did he say to make you look like that?"

"Like what?" Han asked guardedly.

"Like you've just seen a ghost."

He tried to dismiss her question with a weak version of a joke. "Maybe I have."

She glared at this latest attempt at evasion. "I don't believe in ghosts," she told him.

"Yeah? Tell that to the people on Varun17," he said.

"There are ghosts there?"

"Technically, no. They're not ghosts. But come face to face with one of them and even you might become a believer."

She knew very well that he was trying to confuse and distract her. Whatever was going on, he was not about to share it with her. But why should that come as a surprise?

He had only one thing more to tell her. "Fiach says we gotta go. Now."

And so they went.

"Is this whole place a maze of tunnels?" Rey asked breathlessly a little later as she tried to keep up with the two men.

"Would you expect anything different from a place that's run by smugglers?"

"Not really. Are you going to tell me now?" she asked.

"Tell you what?"

"Where we're heading and what you're hiding."

This time he didn't hesitate in answering her, but he only gave her half an answer. "There's an underground lake. We're headed there. We just have to follow it for a while and it will eventually lead us back to the surface. Not far from there is where the Millenium Falcon is waiting for us."

"You're sure Imperial Forces haven't found it yet?"

He glanced back at her a wicked grin. "You underestimate the wiles of an experienced smuggler. We're always thinking ahead." But he didn't give her any more details.

A little further ahead, he stopped so abruptly that she almost ran into his back.

"Why are we- "

He put a hand up to quiet her and tilted his head. "I thought I heard something."

She listened, too, but she didn't hear anything, only the faint rumblings and eerie echoes they had been hearing all along. She had no idea what caused them and probably wouldn't want to know anyway.

"It's creepy down here," she said, shivering.

"Yeah, but I feel a lot better underground than on top of it right now," he said abstractedly as he continued to look around them.

She didn't know if she agreed with him there. She was pretty sure she would be glad to be anywhere but here. She reached up to brush a tangle of cobwebs away from her face.

"You're probably going to get mad that I didn't tell you," he said as he watched her lower her hand.

"Tell me what?" she asked, the smallest hint of dread beginning to gather in the pit of her stomach.

"That the last network of underground tunnels was a piece of cake compared to what we're going to have to pass through now."

That didn't sound good. At all.

"But you're telling me _now_?"

"You'll need to be prepared for what's ahead of us."

"What's ahead of us?"

As they came to another sharp turn, he stopped dead in his tracks again. Looking straight ahead, he jerked his chin and said, "That."

What she saw left her dumbstruck. A knot of burgeoning panic was already forming in her stomach, replacing the dread.

"What is all- _that_?" she asked with a suddenly too-dry mouth.

"Spider webs."

Spider webs was an understatement.

If there was one thing Rey was squeamish about, it was spiders. Thick webs coated the walls as far as the eye could see, which naturally wasn't very far down here in the darkness in the lantern light. But as far as she could tell, the only way they could possibly continue on was to go straight through that small dark hole right in the middle of the spider webs. And the passageway was so confining that anyone could see that it would be impossible to go on without actually touching the spider webs.

"Don't worry," Han said. "They're not poisonous."

"You mean there _are_ spiders?"

"Of course there are spiders. What do you think made the webs?"

She closed her eyes. She had to tell herself to keep breathing, because suddenly it felt like she couldn't get any air into her lungs at all. Han didn't help when he said, "I'm telling you now so that when you feel them crawling on you, you won't panic."

" _If_ I feel something crawling on me, you mean."

" _When_ you feel something," he corrected her.

For long moments she couldn't find her voice, and then she informed him, "There's something you should know. The panic part may be out of my control."

"Well, you're just going to have to make sure that doesn't happen. Panicking is not going to help."

She turned slowly and faced him, her hands closing into tight fists at her sides. At first, Han didn't know if she was going to actually hit him because she did look a little wild-eyed at the moment, which surprised him because so far, she had shown herself to be pretty fearless.

But fearless didn't come anywhere near to describing her at the moment. "You were right in not telling me about the spiders," she said in a low, tense voice. "Because had I known about _that_ \- " She waved her hand. "The only way you would have gotten me down here was by dragging my lifeless body."

"You can do this," he told her calmly, knowing that calm was what she needed right now.

"I don't think I can."

"You want to get the hell off this godforsaken planet, don't y- ?"

He stopped and frowned as he looked behind her, leaning to the side just a little bit. She knew he was listening again.

He looked back at her. "Look, you have two options, and only two. We get through those tunnels _together_ , or you stay behind by yourself and come up with your own plan. Personally, I'd go with the _together_ part of it."

"You would leave me here?" she asked.

Naw, he'd carry her out kicking and screaming if he had to. He just wasn't going to let her know that. Right now, she needed to be pushed into doing something she thought she couldn't do. But the bottom line was that they couldn't stay here.

"Wait!" Fiach cried, staring straight into that black abyss of sepulchral silence behind them.

There was what looked very much like raw panic in the man's face and bulging eyes.

"Did you see something?" Han asked, tensing himself, his own eyes looking a little wild now.

"Hurry!" he barked over his shoulder and he wasted no time in leading the way towards the webs. There was a new urgency in him that hadn't been there before and that, perhaps, frightened Rey more than anything else.

Following reluctantly behind him, Rey was imagining all kinds of things. She felt a cold breeze stir from somewhere. She looked back over her shoulder as a frigid puff of air stirred the loose tendrils of her hair.

She heard it, too, this time. Footsteps echoing in the dark passage behind them.

Were there storm troopers? Something even more terrifying?

Fiach was in such a panic by now that he tripped and hit the ground hard. A pained, shocked expression distorted his face as he struggled to get back to his feet. He stood up only to stumble back as he gaped in abject terror at the far end of the hallway they had just come from.

There _was_ someone else down here with them. Rey saw him, too. Their pursuer was a menacing, caped figure at the far reaches of the tunnel. He was dressed entirely in black, and he moved with a purposefulness of a predator. A hood concealed his face, but in the darkness of the hood, two eyes glimmered eerily in the lantern light.

"Come on," Han urged.

Fiach didn't need to be told twice. But Rey didn't move as the hood fell back. And when it was gone completely, she drew her breath in sharply, frozen by what she saw.

"Oh, Lo', he'p us," Fiach blubbered in his heavy accent as he struggled to draw air into suddenly panic-stricken lungs. Rey watched as he dropped to his knees, cowering and whimpering as the man they called the scourge of the galaxy looked down at him and smiled cynically.


End file.
